The New Mac Pro

[zag]

Its about time someone moved away from the box design of computers.

 

Well done to Apple for being so pioneering as always.

 

This thing has power and beauty!

[seawolf]

The whole string of external devices we would need in our school programs makes these new machines un-usable for us ... not sure how it's going to work out but I know our school just bought several hundred top of the line Mac Pro towers to replace our older ones while we still can.

 

You're school purchased several HUNDRED top of the line Mac Pros?? What in the world do you use them for? You must have an IT budget that would get some countries out of debt.

[Arthur]

Ooh, shiny!

 

[synaesthesia]

Its about time someone moved away from the box design of computers.

 

Well done to Apple for being so pioneering as always.

 

This thing has power and beauty!

 

*holding back giggles* next you'll tell us Columbus discovered America!

[mac_shinobi]

Don't get me wrong it is a great design, small, compact etc but I will miss the slot loading metal trays to put the hard drives inside the older style mac pro's

[rdk]

Those pictures beside the iPad are pretty amazing. I didn't realise how small it was.

[Arthur]

Those pictures beside the iPad are pretty amazing. I didn't realise how small it was.

Small size, big price.

 

 

 

Left: Retail prices / Right: Edu prices

Edited October 25, 2013 by Arthur
Rehosted images

[localzuk]

imgur is blocked in pretty much most schools I'd imagine, so we can't see the images.

[Arthur]

imgur is blocked in pretty much most schools I'd imagine, so we can't see the images.

Don't most schools have different levels of filtering for staff vs students?

 

Btw, I have rehosted the images above.

[Arthur]

The new Mac Pro: First impressions « MacWorld

 

http://snag.gy/MOCxg.jpg

[Arthur]

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Teardown « iFixIt

 

Edited December 31, 2013 by Arthur

[Arthur]

[synaesthesia]

Lifespan - disposable camera level. Form over function, rather typical. I'm impressed never-the-less, as any person would be but sometimes people just go too far. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why these are likely to have unworkable failure rates and hardware engineers planet-wide are glad they work for someone else where their work is built to last. Edited January 14, 2014 by synaesthesia

[seawolf]

Lifespan - disposable camera level. Form over function, rather typical. I'm impressed never-the-less, as any person would be but sometimes people just go too far. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why these are likely to have unworkable failure rates and hardware engineers planet-wide are glad they work for someone else where their work is built to last.

 

So, why do you think they will have unworkable failure rates? The cooling system is ingenious and works very well from all reports. They are also made in the USA probably to some of the best quality control standards money can buy.

[localzuk]

So, why do you think they will have unworkable failure rates? The cooling system is ingenious and works very well from all reports. They are also made in the USA probably to some of the best quality control standards money can buy.

 

Indeed. My thoughts too. They've come up with a very good cooling system to handle the heat output, so I can't see why these devices would have a high failure rate...

[synaesthesia]

Time will tell on it. It doesn't look particularly ingenious, it looks standard fare. I'd like to get my hands on one of course, I'm a tinkerer, a hardware monkey. I also entirely ignore 90% of website's bile until I've had my hands on something and made my own decisions! My current diagnosis goes on Apple's previous failures to apply correct levels of cooling to "premium" hardware ending up in macbooks and mac pro's being chock full of dry joints. Hopefully they've made some progress. Edited February 6, 2014 by synaesthesia

[PotNoodleTech]

I aint no apple fanboy but am I the only one that's impressed with this? It's an inspired and very clever peice of design. As far as I am aware no other manufacturer has ever designed a workstation so that all components mate to the same heatsink for cooling with just one big fan?

 

Don't get me wrong, it's expensive and underpowered and has high maintennace costs compared to a top class workstation like a HP Z820 - but just look at it! Arty farty types will be buying it in droves!

[synaesthesia]

Yes, plenty of others have done this. It's not uncommon, i think a majority of consoles do similar but there's a little less to them. In fact it's hardly any different to basic laptop design in reality. Apple have failed at that before. All devices physically connecting to the same heatsink feels like a heat trap, it's a bit different with heatpipes as the transfer is "mobile". There's a lot more heat coming from this than heatpipe connected laptops too with a workstation level gpu, high end processor and the RAM. I'd like to see a top-down of that heatsink, as it stands it looks unsuitable. I'd of course say "clearly they've done the work" but this is Apple. Looking good > function or lifespan.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yes, plenty of others have done this. It's not uncommon,

 

Plenty? Who? What? I'm talking about PCs here.

[seawolf]

Yes, plenty of others have done this. It's not uncommon, i think a majority of consoles do similar but there's a little less to them. In fact it's hardly any different to basic laptop design in reality. Apple have failed at that before. All devices physically connecting to the same heatsink feels like a heat trap, it's a bit different with heatpipes as the transfer is "mobile". There's a lot more heat coming from this than heatpipe connected laptops too with a workstation level gpu, high end processor and the RAM. I'd like to see a top-down of that heatsink, as it stands it looks unsuitable. I'd of course say "clearly they've done the work" but this is Apple. Looking good > function or lifespan.

 

I can't say that I remember ever seeing a similar heatsink and cooling design before for any other computer. Consoles mostly use a stock standard PC or laptop cooling design (Xbox 360 CPU Heat Sink Replacement - iFixit) and I don't know of any laptops that use a triangle shaped heatsink and logic board?

 

I don't know how much real world experience you have with Macs (given your comments on function and lifespan), but I have owned 12 PowerMacs / Mac Pros in the past 9 years (either personally or as company IT gear) and I've only had a hardware failure on one of them of any sort. That was a power supply on a 5 year old Power Mac. Once that was replaced it went for another 3 years until I sold it. The longest lived PowerMac I had was a G4 that wouldn't die even though it was 10 years old, but wasn't much use to me anymore. I've also managed hundreds of Macs in that timeframe and failure rates have been nearly non-existent with one exception - DVD drives on 2010 Mac Minis. Those had a habit of dying and are probably one reason why they disappeared on next version of the Mini.

[mac_shinobi]

I can't say that I remember ever seeing a similar heatsink and cooling design before for any other computer. Consoles mostly use a stock standard PC or laptop cooling design (Xbox 360 CPU Heat Sink Replacement - iFixit) and I don't know of any laptops that use a triangle shaped heatsink and logic board?

 

I don't know how much real world experience you have with Macs (given your comments on function and lifespan), but I have owned 12 PowerMacs / Mac Pros in the past 9 years (either personally or as company IT gear) and I've only had a hardware failure on one of them of any sort. That was a power supply on a 5 year old Power Mac. Once that was replaced it went for another 3 years until I sold it. The longest lived PowerMac I had was a G4 that wouldn't die even though it was 10 years old, but wasn't much use to me anymore. I've also managed hundreds of Macs in that timeframe and failure rates have been nearly non-existent with one exception - DVD drives on 2010 Mac Minis. Those had a habit of dying and are probably one reason why they disappeared on next version of the Mini.

 

Can't say I have seen any consoles or come to think of it anything else having a triangular shaped heatsink with a fan blowing cool air down the central area to keep the metallic fins cool(er)

 

Had a 12" G4 notebook, 2008 Mac Pro with two 2.8 Ghz Quad Core's, currently have a 2011 mac mini ( without an optical drive ).

 

Only issue I had was with the G4 notebook due to the pin snapping inside of the dc in cable and had to replace that , one order later from ebay and some torx / philips screw drivers etc and I had it repaired after using a combination of ifixit.net and youtube and then sold it on ebay.

 

2008 Mac Pro I sold on ebay as needed money to get a car

[synaesthesia]

I have a few randoms at home much to my wife's chagrin, and have repaired/written off an unknown amount - probably somewhere between 700 and a thousand machines of varying ages (rough estimate), PPC and Intel. I wasn't referring to the shape of the heatsink, just heat connected components.

 

The amount of warranty return macbook pro's I've dealt with is beyond amusing. Apple are salespeople, very good ones, and do a good job in hiding things from public eye. Thankfully I work in education now (obviously) and don't have to deal with too much apple hardware as a result.

[mac_shinobi]

I have a few randoms at home much to my wife's chagrin, and have repaired/written off an unknown amount - probably somewhere between 700 and a thousand machines of varying ages (rough estimate), PPC and Intel. I wasn't referring to the shape of the heatsink, just heat connected components.

 

The amount of warranty return macbook pro's I've dealt with is beyond amusing. Apple are salespeople, very good ones, and do a good job in hiding things from public eye. Thankfully I work in education now (obviously) and don't have to deal with too much apple hardware as a result.

 

Each to there own I suppose

[featured_spectre]

I have had a few Apple products in my time. I had a first gen iPod touch, a G4, a Power Mac and a Macbook Air.

 

The air failed quite spectacularly because it couldn't cool itself sufficiently when running photoshop and a few other bits (Office etc). It quite literally burnt itself out. Apple wouldnt touch it, despite being under warranty, because I didn't give it a sufficient space to cool. I didn't realise a desk with a laptop cooling tray wasn't sufficient, but hey ho!

The G4 is probably still running somewhere, I had it for 4 years and never once failed on me.

The powermac is had a few PSU failures (I think 3 overall), and then a motherboard failure after the 3rd PSU. I gave up on it.

The iPod touch, once upgraded as high as it would go, ran like a turtle through treacle and died shortly after.

 

Older apple products are fantastically long lived, and work well for a long time.

The new products (in my experience) fail quite quickly, and apple themselves dont like dealing with their own failed products and try to shift the blame to you rather than their defective parts or workmanship.

 

As a result, I steer clear where possible.

[seawolf]

I have a few randoms at home much to my wife's chagrin, and have repaired/written off an unknown amount - probably somewhere between 700 and a thousand machines of varying ages (rough estimate), PPC and Intel. I wasn't referring to the shape of the heatsink, just heat connected components.

 

I suppose YMMV, but the amount of warranty return macbook pro's I've dealt with is beyond amusing. Apple are salespeople, very good ones, and do a good job in hiding things from public eye. Thankfully I work in education now (obviously) and don't have to deal with too much apple hardware as a result.

 

There have only been three (singular) issues I've seen with 2009 and later MBP's.

 

1. An Intel SSD that died after 12 months, replaced under warranty in 24 hours.

2. A trackpad that was smashed by a teacher's kid on a 4 year old MBP - replaced by me for only $75

3. A MBP that was toasted (literally) with a full glass of red wine poured onto the keyboard.

 

On the other hand, we've had Dell e6500s that have required multiple repairs for multiple things including faulty screens, bezel falling apart, dead speakers, faulty keyboards, faulty logic board, faulty RAM, faulty HDDs. Now those things have been what I would call laughable.

 

Probably the best of the PC laptops I've seen lately are some of the Ultrabooks by Asus and Samsung. But, then again they are dead ringers for MBAs...