I know an animation/media rendering company that buys every model of Mac Pro in bulk. They'll buy dozens of these things. I assume that many similar companies do the same.
HN really shows a lot of ignorance whenever Mac Pros are discussed. HN readers, for the most part, are not the market for these devices. The market is non-tech companies, with little or no IT staff, that have extremely resource-intensive tasks. They buy Macs because non-IT people can figure out how to use Macs on their own. They buy the top of the line because it makes their jobs easier. They don't care about the price tag because it's still cheaper than staffing an IT department.
The price of a Mac Pro isn't the price of a good computer. It's the price of a good computer that is guaranteed to work, under warranty, and comes with basic IT service from at the local mall. That's useless to someone who knows how to build and administer their own machine, but easily worth $50k to a profitable business.
Oh, I am absolutely sure, the intended audience will be delighted with the Mac Pro and get great value. The problem is, that this audience is a very small one and more generic professionals don't have a real alternative in the Mac universe. A lot of users are looking for and not finding a Mac with a
- powerful desktop processor
- good desktop graphics card
- extensible storage
Bonus points for a machine that can be repaired with a reasonable effort.
I feel like Apple has a huge hole in the market here by not having beefier Mac Minis available with matching-form-factor Thunderbolt enclosures (hard drives, eGPU, etc) that are easily stackable. That could get most of the way to a traditional high-end desktop system but with each part of it purchasable separately over time.
Yes, stacking the Mini would be kind of an option, but it lacks a powerful desktop processor. And when you are done, your desk is covered by your Mac cluster :)
Yes, I don't get why the external enclosures for graphic cards don't have some space for disk space. But I found this link today: https://www.ifun.de/animaionic-desktop-untersatz-fuer-den-ma...
If that sees the light, that could be some improvements. If only Apple would offer the Mini in a not so mini enclosure :)
> Yes, I don't get why the external enclosures for graphic cards don't have some space for disk space
eGPUs currently are kind of a wild west of development and are still trying to decide on basic stuff like form factor and how to route USB passthroughs. That concept you linked looks like it sidesteps a lot of that by using multiple Thunderbolt connections at once, though.
The Mac Pro is intended for use as a workstation, as opposed to a typical desktop computer. Workstations are used for tasks with high computational intensity, such as video editing and rendering, 3D modeling, graphics development, etc. I expect machines like this would see use at Pixar, Sony, Weta, and so on. For example, if you watch the announcement keynote from WWDC (I think it was), they show its ability to live-render multiple 4K video streams simultaneously — where a high-end desktop would struggle with live-rendering even a single video stream of a lesser quality.
Except Pixar, Sony, Weta, etc. are all Linux houses. MacOS has very little to no presence in the top-tier CG studios for actual CG work (we have a lot of MacBooks around for Keynote and video calls and whatnot though).
Oh! I didn't realize that. Sorry, maybe my original comment wasn't clear, but I just meant that it's people in roles like those who would be using workstations such as the Mac Pro. I didn't mean to say that I had knowledge that those specific people actually used it. Apologies for any lack of clarity on my part there.
Same thing anyone uses a Xeon based workstation for; video editing, rendering, simulations, audio work, etc.
Honestly $50k for the high end model means this will be a middle-of-the-road priced piece of equipment in a lot of studios in the world of £20k microphones and speakers.
For example Calvin Harris has at least one of these new Mac Pros (spec unknown but most likely the highest) in his studio and he has _speakers_ worth more than it.
Yes with some specific setups there are issues. However go to literally any major studio in the US, UK, and most of Europe and you will see Macs everywhere used as part of audio production.
High-end graphics and video editing. For example, the Afterburner card is specifically made to allow real-time editing of multiple streams of 4K or 8K raw footage, which normally requires using 'proxy' compressed versions for real-time work and only cross-applying edits to the raw footage as a background job.
This is the correct answer -- video and 3D. And studios will max them out with their own components however they need.
If you're working on professional films and TV shows, this is obviously worth the price. Studios wouldn't be buying them for their designers and editors if it weren't.
It goes without saying this isn't for consumers or developers.
Terrible default GPU for any kind of rendering. 580 is basically their 2nd cheapest low-end gaming GPU at the moment and this is a less powerful, more memory version.
