back to article Ban-dodging Mac Pro to hit Blighty's shops as Apple bows to fan fears

Apple is preparing to release a new version of its high-end Mac Pro computer in Blighty almost a year after Eurocrats banned the sale of a previous model. A shipping date has been set for the new Mac Pro, which is the only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading. The Pro is aimed at business customers who need …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Frankee Llonnygog

    The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

    I know we can't expect Mr Hammill to be funny, insightful, entertaining, or or in any way useful except for adding somebody else's shopworn catchphrases to a regurgitated press release, but he could at least attempt to be factually correct.

    Mac Minis are easily user upgradeable. That's all

    1. Steven Raith

      Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

      Mac Minis are rather more upgradable than the new Mac Pros, actually. About the only device you can upgrade on the Mac Pro appears to be the RAM. Everything else uses a custom connector, including the storage and GPUs.

      On Mac Minis, you can upgrade the RAM and HDD. CPU - well, arguably, on both, as they both use normal sockets as I recall but the usual concerns about TDP make it all a bit sketchier AFAIK.

      Otherwise, they share the same Thunderbolt bus as the rest of the Mac range (the exception being that the Pro has six, rather than one).

      So as per Frankee, I'm not sure where that line came from!

      Steven R

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

        GPU's - I am told the idea is that external GPU boxes will be avaliable via Thunderbolt. While messy this might be quite interesting as you could have an external box containing several graphics cards in parallel. For 4K video processing this could be a real boon. Instead of handing NVIDIA 800 quid for their underwhelming Quadro, you could have 2 or more consumer GPU's working in parallel.

        Memory - Do you have a source for the memory being upgradable? Last I heard it was soldered onto the board just like a Macbook.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        MAC Pro - CPU is Upgradable

        Ar reported on any number of Fanboi sites such as 9to5mac, macrumors etc

        The CPU is socketed so can be replaced/upgraded.

        Yes I'd like one and some of us don't care if it looks like a wastepaper bin but I'm not in the market for a new system at the moment.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: MAC Pro - CPU is Upgradable

          By the time you'd want to upgrade the CPU the clock speeds and pinouts will probably have changed negating any worthwhile upgrade a moot point.

          Just like the old days when you had Pentium board with a P150 installed but you couldn't run beyond a P200 on it.

          1. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Re: MAC Pro - CPU is Upgradable

            >A shipping date has been set for the new Mac Pro, which is the only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

            Why the so demonstrably incorrect assertion?

            The 27" iMac allows the RAM to be upgraded.

            1. nanchatte

              Re: MAC Pro - CPU is Upgradable

              LOL

          2. Ian Michael Gumby

            Re: MAC Pro - CPU is Upgradable

            Sorry had to down vote that.

            Upgrade is 'relative'. You could always buy a slower chip or one with less cores to start and then upgrade within the same cpu socket.

            Example... buying a small i3 and then pushing up to i7 while staying within the 1150 socket.

      3. Frank Bough

        Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

        Just because something uses a non-standard connector it doesn't become non-upgradeable. I would expect to see several Mac Pro specific SSD upgrades become available soon.

        1. Lusty

          Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

          It's not a non standard connector and it's not an SSD. It's PCI flash using the same connector as other PCI flash boards.

          1. Frank Bough

            Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

            Huh? What exactly do you think SSD means?

            1. Lusty

              Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

              Solid state disk. These come with drive electronics which the PCI flash doesn't require and is therefore a different component. It doesn't connect to the disk system it connects direct to the CPU via the PCI bus at far greater speed than SAS can manage and therefore also could offer higher IOPS.

              1. Frank Bough

                Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

                Still treated like a disk by the OS - RAM disks and flash disks (however physically attached) have been part of standard PC storage options for at least 20 years.

                1. Lusty

                  Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

                  It might show up as a logical drive but that doesn't mean it's a "disk". This is much closer to a FusionIO board than a disk which is why Apple specked it. The lack of understanding on this forum is because PC people don't understand the difference and so assume an SSD is comparable storage which it is most certainly not. Transfer speed is higher, latency lower and IOPS higher than SSD. This also has the knock on effect that less memory is required and even less CPU since it's not locked in a wait state all the time.

                  1. Frank Bough

                    Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

                    Fusion IO boards are incredibly overpriced compared to a RAIDed set of 6G SATA SSDs. We've testeed precisely that and both IOPs and bandwidth were better with the SATA RAID. What was this magic PCIe special sauce again?

                    Apple made the right choice going with PCIe, but let's not pretend that changing your flash disk interface is some huge quantum performance leap. The flash itself just isn't that fast.

                    1. Lusty

                      Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

                      It's fast enough to saturate 6Gbps SAS interfaces. It's fast enough that I saturated 2 16Gbps FC interfaces with a Violin memory box. Since every block can be accessed effectively as fast as the interface can throw the data as long as the controller keeps up I think it actually does give a huge performance leap. Not quantum though, that means tiny :)

                      1. Lusty

                        Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

                        For what it's worth I just tested using SQLIO inside a Windows VM on my rMBP using an 8GB test file, 2 threads, 128K sequential write for 5 minutes I sustained just under 5GB/s (40Gb/s) at 36k IOPS which the 6Gb/s (750MB/s) SAS is simply not capable of. The rMBP uses 4 PCIe lanes of 2GB/s each for the controller, so you were right that the flash cannot keep up with this interface but definitely wrong that it isn't better than SAS. Mine is the 512GB module.

          2. Steven Raith

            Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

            Lusty, are you sure about that? I thought it used a custom connector, or is that just the earlier SATA SSDs used in other mac portables?

            (not trolling - genuinely think I've missed something here)

            1. Lusty

              Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

              Go to an Apple store and look. They say it's PCIe 2 and it looks like a 2 lane PCIe connector. The many stories of "custom" connectors are likely from people expecting SAS connectors who didn't read the spec.

              1. Steven Raith

                Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

                Lusty, yes it's a PCI-e device, but it's not a standard PCI-E connector (m.2) - it's Apples own proprietary connector, keyings and pinouts. If you try to connect a standard PCI-E SSD to it, it won't fit. That's the definition of proprietary; custom for no reason other than vendor lock in.

                There's a reason that every single tech site under the sun describes it as proprietary or custom - they all know what M.2 looks like, this ain't it, and Apple are the only people using it.

                Steven R

                1. Lusty

                  Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

                  It looks like you're right, although the one in the Pro looked to me just like a regular PCIe slot but it's too short for a x4 connector (I thought it was a x2). It could be that they have just put 2 lanes on either side to keep the size down but either way it's different. I suspect that anyone buying this won't be bothered by expensive flash, after all the equivalent HP part is €1400 for a 410GB flash drive (FusionIO PCIe).

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

          "Just because something uses a non-standard connector..."

          Can anybody spell lock-in? Suddenly you can only buy the parts Apple want to sell you, from dealers Apple will let you buy from, at the price Apple will tell you to buy at.

          Last century, Commodore was fined gazillions for price fixing. Why isn't Apple being investigated?

          1. Frank Bough

            Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

            Because they don't have a monopoly on PC hardware or software?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The same EU regulatory panel the demanded cucumbers must be straight.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

      I'll consider the Mac Pro "upgradeable" when I can find some round DDR3 to fit in it...

      ... Mine is the one with the sarcasm sign on the back.

  2. 45RPM Silver badge

    A landmark moment in Apple history

    With the new Mac Pro, this is the first time in the whole history of Apple that they're flogging a computer that isn't internally accessorizable*. Given that most people don't fiddle with their computers internally, I don't think that this will hurt the bottom line much - but I like mucking about inside my machine, so I don't see myself replacing my trusty last generation Mac Pro any time soon.

    *I'm defining upgradable as improvements to what you already have, and accessorizable as augmenting what you already have - expansion cards, additional storage and so forth.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A landmark moment in Apple history

      Indeed. I added a PC ESATA card to mine. While not officially supported it works like a charm if you can live without hot swapping.

      Thunderbolt is nice but you are relying on 3rd parties coming up with the solutions. You can't even bung in a PC card like I did knowing that in theory it should work.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A landmark moment in Apple history

      >Given that most people don't fiddle with their computers internally

      .... disagree - most pro users want a rectangular 4u with a hinged lid....industrial design my arse.

      1. 45RPM Silver badge

        Re: A landmark moment in Apple history

        Yeah. See what you did there. You conflated 'Most Users' with 'Most Pro Users'. Actually, even 'Most Pro Users' is a woolly definition. I would say that graphic designers, scientists, video editors and so forth, who demand vastly powerful CPUs, count as Pro users. Most of these don't want to augment their machines internally.

        If by Pro users you mean hackers, programmers, sys-admins and wannabe IT pros, then yes. Most of these demand internal augmentation. We are, however, the minority.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not falling for the hype

    On the upside it's very powerful. On the downside the only way to expand it is with external Thunderbolt devices.

    Some of us bought Mac Pros to fill them with hard disks (all 4 of my bays are full + have 2 DVD writers). The new Mac Pro will not let you upgrade either the boot hard drive or the memory.

    As someone who had upgraded his boot hard drive twice since 2008 and also purchased all barring the very base spec of memory from Crucial, I'm not very impressed by this. Not least because you are forced into buying at Apple prices for more memory and hard disk space instead of doing what people used to do and buying the base spec and upgrading 3rd party. Seen to recall £150 being the figure I saved just buy buying my memory from Crucial!

    At least they are suggesting that graphics cards upgrades might be upgradable via Thunderbolt. Small blessings!

    I get the feeling that if I buy one it will end up looking like my old Amstrad CPC 6128 with expansions hanging off of every port and cables everywhere! So much for new improved sexier design. Nice and neat providing you don't plug anything into it!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not falling for the hype

      With the right Thunderbolt cable, you can put everything in a (ventilated) cupboard or a different room and just have your display, keyboard and mouse on the desk.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not falling for the hype

        If you are going to be sticking it in a cupboard you may as well buy a rack mount server and turn it into a workstation!

        It's the kind of design over function decision that makes me wonder if a certain ginger bearded inventor hasn't been doing some consultancy in Cupertino......

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: Not falling for the hype

          My friend is buying one soon, and he isn't bothered for a moment by the inability to add harddisk space. This might be because his workflow (video production, 3D rendered motion graphics etc) is exactly what this machine is designed for. Its a tool that will save him time, allowing him to earn more money.

          He'll shunt current projects to the internal SSD from a cabinet of external redundant storage via ethernet or Thunderbolt, and back out again as required.

          1. rh587

            Re: Not falling for the hype

            As Dave126 says, I think the expectation is most users will be working with massive datasets and files - big project files that are stored on a NAS/SAN, not on the local box.

            Have enough storage locally and the rest will be stored separately, with lots of external connectivity for BMD stuff, Red Rocket boxes, 4K/8K/16K graphics cards as required. A fair few PCIe breakout boxes are popping up with a thunderbolt cable hanging off a box containing one or two double-width PCIe slots and a chunky PSU. Self contained in that it doesn't affect the cooling or power drain on the Mac Pro.

            As others have mentioned, if your Mac Pro fails, or you go on the road with a laptop, being able to simply unplug your TB chassis and move your Red Rocket / [insert other expansion here] over to the MacBook is incredibly useful.

          2. Robert Sneddon

            RAM

            I hope he realises the new Mac Pro maxes out at 64GB of RAM which will put a severe crimp on doing anything memory-intensive. The older Mac Pro boxes could go as high as 96GB I think and the server-level Hackintosh community believe OS/X has a hard 128GB RAM limit as they have problems running it on anything with more memory (not a problem with Windows 8 though).

            1. Dave 126 Silver badge

              Re: RAM

              >Perhaps its different when you are spending someone else's cash?

              No, it's his money; he's the MD of his own video production / motion graphics company. He has done the sums, and is buying one. Since his business has grown steadily since he started it, I'm inclined to believe he knows what he is doing.

              >I hope he realises the new Mac Pro maxes out at 64GB of RAM which will put a severe crimp on doing anything memory-intensive.

              Not really. He currently uses the older Mac Pros and a 32 GB Hackintosh, and hasn't come close to running into RAM limits. His workflow is mainly video - compositing, editing, colour grading etc - but also ray-trace rendering of 3D models and compositing the results into the above. RAM is just not the current bottle neck, and again, he knows what he is doing.

              It is not the machine for me - I'm a PC based CAD jockey. My level of CAD work just doesn't require the extreme storage IO that video work does, and intensive tasks like rendering can be distributed across any CPUs/GPUs across the network.

            2. Dieter Haussmann

              Re: RAM

              Not with Mavericks as it uses compressed memory.

    2. chris 17 Silver badge

      Re: Not falling for the hype

      RAM is available at crucial ~$ 439.99 USD for 2x 16 GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory, $500 USD for the Apple equivalent

      http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Mac%20Pro%20(Late%202013)&Cat=RAM#

      its been some time since you've bought a new Mac, I think a few things have changed!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not falling for the hype

        That's still 60 dollars which probably works out at about 60 quid given the usual pricing on these items. Still an amount of money I might wish to save given the trivial effort involved if you have the old chassis. Indeed in terms of servicing the old Mac Pro is one of the nicest chassis I've worked in outside of high end servers. Even the bits you aren't supposed to get at (e.g. the wireless card) are a doddle.

        Perhaps its different when you are spending someone else's cash?

    3. Lusty

      Re: Not falling for the hype

      "Some of us bought Mac Pros to fill them with hard disks (all 4 of my bays are full + have 2 DVD writers). The new Mac Pro will not let you upgrade either the boot hard drive or the memory."

      What you appear to have missed though is that even if you used 16Gbps FC to add disk to the old one it would not have been as fast as using the full Thunderbolt capability in the new Pro. Since you appear to have added disk internally probably with SCSI or SAS that would suggest you either don't understand disk performance or just needed capacity. In either case a NAS is the modern way to achieve what you have done while a SAN would be the way to achieve high performance if you decide you need that. Nobody with up to date knowledge would think of upgrading a machine in this class with internal drives for anything other than system disk which is upgradable on the Pro. Using Thunderbolt you could even add external PCI flash if you wanted to.

  4. Alan Denman
    Thumb Down

    So 4K at 6 grand.

    They will sell you the matching 4K monitor making for a minimum outlay of £6000.

    It could be worthwhile to get away from a competing pair of Dells at £1000 total.

    £5000 to get a way from Windows 8 is a bargain in my books.

    1. Steve Todd
      FAIL

      Re: So 4K at 6 grand.

      One wonders why DELL still sell their 32" 4K monitors for $3500, could it be that these new models are smaller and lower quality?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So 4K at 6 grand.

      A few £ to get the start menu back, the knowledge that you have to search for File History to do incremental backups - much cheaper than £5000 to escape from the unwanted features of Windows 8.

      But in fact you can't get a pair of Dells with the same spec for the money. If I needed one, I would pay for it.

      Apple has basically reinvented the SGI workstation in a prettier case.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mac mini, Macbook Pro and iMac are all user upgradeable

    You can increase the RAM on the mini, Macbook Pro 13" (non retina display) and 27" iMac

    13" Macbook Pro owners can also upgrade their storage without voiding their warranty.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Mac mini, Macbook Pro and iMac are all user upgradeable

      The newer Macbook Pro's do not have upgradable memory. For example my 2012 model does not.

  6. Frank Bough

    FFS

    " which is the only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading"

    Demonstrably false.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I agree. The old Mac Pros let you have internal raid arrays, any expansion cards of your choice etc etc. This new one relies on thunderbolt, and you can't even place those external devices on top of the computer case!

    The requirements for "pro" users who can fork out the cash for this are very very different. Most will need the ability to customise the setup. Maybe not right away, but in a year or two. So you are limited to Thunderbolt only (which hasn't been adopted by a lot of manufacturers), can't upgrade a lot...

    The Mac Pro is totally flawed. They were looking at people with Macbooks and iPhones and forgot that "Pro" is a different league with different requirements. The "sexy" bit is debatable. My guess is this will be the last Mac Pro.

    1. Frank Bough

      I think the shift that you're missing is that once you decouple the 'expansion chassis' from the computer you can use a number of different his machines to drive your fixed peripherals. I would expect to see multiple TB2 interfaces on the next MacBookPro.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        >I think the shift that you're missing is that once you decouple the 'expansion chassis' from the computer you can use a number of different his machines to drive your fixed peripherals.

        Indeed. Since some of those expansion cards cost upwards of £2000, being able to use the same card in a thunderbolt chassis in the studio with a Mac Pro, as well as with a Macbook when shooting video on site is very useful.

        Should a host machine go belly-up, a new machine can be swapped in more easily.

        1. P. Lee

          > Should a host machine go belly-up, a new machine can be swapped in more easily.

          All true and nice, but equally possible with the old chassis design.

          Lightpeak would have been better - thunderbolt is far too short for moving noisy things such as a GPU farm out of the way. I understand its expensive so have an expansion card to do the media conversion.

          I think I'd have stuck with the PC format and used the multiple PCIe16 slots for flash or thunderbolt ports.

          My problem with Apple is more philosophical. While their design might be good at the current level, they seem to be deliberately designing-in limitations. Yes its an incredibly powerful beast, but why remove the PCIe slots? TB isn't better than PCIe.

          1. myob

            Not enough PCIe on the processor

            The pro uses the PCIe to maximise bandwidth to the video cards. There aren't enough lanes to have PCI slots and TB externally, so they have dumped the internal slots in favour of external expansion.

            AnandTech has a good explanation: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/8

    2. Kirk Northrop
      Megaphone

      Ooh, it sounds like "Apple's dropping Floppy Drives" all over again.

      Namely a lot of people will make a lot of noise, Apple will end up being right and we'll all be expanding our computers mostly externally in five years time.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ditched the floppy without supplying a practical replacement

        @Kirk Northrop. Apple gets *way* too much credit for prematurely ditching the floppy in the original iMac. As I commented in a previous post:-

        http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2011/08/15/review_apple_mac_mini_core_i5_2011/#c_1147314

        "Is this the same iMac that everyone who owned one rushed out and bought a transparent-plastic-clad external floppy drive for? I do believe that it is!

        Remember that the first iMac only included a CD *reader*. CD writers were still a couple of years from being cheap enough to be a realistic "base" option at this point, and dirt-cheap pen drives were even further off. The only built-in way of sharing information was via a dial-up Internet connection, which unlike modern broadband (a) wasn't always on and thus a PITA for tranferring between two machines, (b) was much, *much* slower, i.e. 0.056 Mbps(!) and (c) nowhere near being universal.

        The fact that the iMac was a major success [and I'll credit it for giving USB the push it needed] doesn't change the fact that leaving out the floppy without a practical alternative in place was jumping the gun."

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: Ditched the floppy without supplying a practical replacement

          At that time, external IoMega ZIP drives were in the £90 territory. I never could work why Sony missed a trick by not trying a 'Data MiniDisk' portable player/recorder earlier in the format's lifespan. 100MB doesn't seem like much today, but compared to 1.44MB it was lovely.

          1. ThomH

            Re: Ditched the floppy without supplying a practical replacement (@Dave 126)

            Sony launched a MiniDisc data drive but those geniuses decided to make the drives incompatible with the normal discs, creating specific MD Data media — it's is identical to a normal minidisc except that the plastic case has an angled corner in the top-right. Presumably the record label had a word about music piracy and thereby lost Sony however many billions over the course of the '90s.

        2. Kirk Northrop

          Re: Ditched the floppy without supplying a practical replacement

          I agree that it could be considered jumping the gun somewhat, and that at the time it seemed a very silly move. But it's also fair to say that someone had to do it, and for Apple with their demographics (at the time) of education and content creators, who were either a) on a LAN or b) the files were bigger than 1.44Mb anyway, maybe they were the right ones to lead it.

          My point was more that we are heading that way anyway, with more and more closed box PCs, and maybe this is a sensible solution that we'll come back in a few years and go "yes. Good move". If nothing else, a few of the big Apple accessory houses will build things for Thunderbolt, which will trickle down, and we'll all be using it at last.

          1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

            Re: Ditched the floppy without supplying a practical replacement

            @Kirk Northrop; "I agree that it could be considered jumping the gun somewhat, and that at the time it seemed a very silly move. But it's also fair to say that someone had to do it"

            There was no point doing it until a workable alternative was in place (e.g. CD burner might have been practical two or three years later).

            Yes, anyone could see that the floppy was out-of-date and needed replacing, but there were no alternatives at a comparable "base" price point at the time. The only thing that the iMac really encouraged was the adoption of USB.

            I don't believe that the iMac forced the decline of the floppy; as I mentioned, everyone rushed out and bought external drives because there was no real, universally-accepted alternative. If the optical drive had been a burner, it might have been a different ketle of fish.

            The floppy later declined partly because disc burners got very cheap, but mainly because USB flash memory pen drives did everything people used floppies for but without the ludicrously small capacity.

    3. Lusty

      "The old Mac Pros let you have internal raid arrays"

      But those were using SAS which maxed out at 6Gbps while the Pro has 6 Thunderbolt 2 ports on the back so performance will be vastly superior in every way. The old RAID had a controller in the way while the Thunderbolt is direct to the CPU so potentially lower latency.

      1. P. Lee

        >But those were using SAS

        and what will be sitting on the end of your TB cable?

        1. Lusty

          Re: >But those were using SAS

          "and what will be sitting on the end of your TB cable?"

          PCIe flash, violin memory array, multiple FC links Atlantis ILIO take your pick.

  8. jai

    usual fail at journalism

    "A shipping date has been set..."

    Did it not, at any point, seem like it might be a good idea to include details of what that shipping date is? Even if it is something as vague as just "February" it'd be, you know, helpful and informative to your readers.

    Or do you assume that all readers of this article will be fanbois and so you despise them all?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: usual fail at journalism

      Aww there there, can't be easy being so sensitive.

  9. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Trollface

    "built for creativity on an epic scale"

    (Creativity not included. Must be bought separately.)

  10. Chas
    Happy

    For sale

    One Grandmother. Only one owner and with FSH.

    Only went to church on Sundays.

    £5000 ono

    No time wasters, please.

    =:~)

  11. Matthew 17

    My 40th birthday in March

    The new Apple wheelie bin will be the gift to me.

    Nothing comes close spec-wise at that price point.

  12. dougal83

    So...

    If you take the Apple badge off... would anyone buy it for the RRP?

    1. ThomH

      Re: So...

      They might not buy it in preference to other options but if were de-Apple'd other than the price then there's nothing to dissuade them particularly.

      The HP Z420 has the same RAM, processor, SSD size and essentially the same GPU but with twice as much GPU memory. It costs 13% more.

      The Lenovo ThinkStation S30 has the same RAM and processor, half the SSD, 50% more GPU RAM but an Nvidia rather than an AMD (fantastic if you're a CUDA person but it benchmarks more slowly for OpenGL stuff), and costs almost 35% more.

      That said, both of those are traditional desktops so they have the internal slots and drive bays. Also they are both computers that are already on the market versus the Mac Pro which isn't quite yet, so their pricing will have been set when components were more expensive than they are now.

      Wait a few months and somebody will be undercutting Apple if they're not already, if only because Apple adjusts price and spec only maybe once a year and prices to be profitable from day one.

      1. Lusty

        Re: So...

        "The HP Z420 has the same RAM, processor, SSD size and essentially the same GPU but with twice as much GPU memory. It costs 13% more."

        HP don't have a base model with equivalent flash, the FusionIO board is €1400 from what I can tell after a bit of Googling. I'd say to buy an equivalent model from HP you'd need a lot more than 13% extra, and you'd end up with a noisy machine with worse expansion options (because you'd have filled half the slots making it do what the Pro does).

        The Lenovo doesn't appear to even offer the PCIe flash option so you'd need to spec up a 3rd party card to even get close to the performance on the Pro.

    2. Matthew 17

      Re: So...

      Spec-wise they're a bargain - http://www.iclarified.com/37089/building-a-windows-pc-equivalent-to-the-mac-pro-costs-thousands-more-chart

      1. dougal83

        Re: So...

        Lol. That was hilarious thank you. :)

  13. We're all in it together

    Can't afford it

    But managed to find this:-

    http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/9047703.htm

    Looks similar.

    Has room for multiple hard drives and enough memory to goto Mars and back.

    And it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Can't afford it

      Your bin has lots of memory? Oh well. I don't know about you, but I'd rather my bin forgets why I put in it!

  14. jason 7

    Its a nice looking piece of kit.

    But I do wonder if secretly Apple would just prefer to ditch its entire laptop/PC line and just become a mobile/media corporation.

    Must be a distraction by now.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Its a nice looking piece of kit.

      As mobile becomes prolific, they now need to look seriously at allowing and selling OSX to run on PC's. It would be like kicking MS between the legs in a dark room.

      1. jason 7

        Re: Its a nice looking piece of kit.

        Nice idea but it would totally destroy the ace up Apple's sleeve....it just works right out of the box.

        Instead of OSX being stringently designed to run with a tightly controlled group of core hardware it would be expected to work flawlessly with billions of combinations like Windows is.

        It would be a massacre. The true greatest technical achivement would be exposed not as "it works out of the box" but as "how the hell does MS get Windows to work so well with so many pieces of kit??"

        That would never do and if I was Apple that's not something I would want to rip up. However, they could I suppose release a neatly developed VM version for folks on other machines to install.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think it looks cool

    Who did they c̶o̶p̶y̶ get their inspiration from?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like