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Can someone explain why in the F anyone would buy an Apple Desktop Pro?
A reminder to everyone is that MS allows you to use many variations of hardware and supports tens of thousands of different types of RAM, CPU, Storage, I/O etc etc. and almost infinite combinations thereof.
If MS provided the hardware in their dedicated configurations the OS would be as stable as Apple as they will control the drivers. Isn't most instability down to unsupported / badly written drivers?
I have a 3yr old AMD4400 running NT7, IB and various others things perfectly. It auto boots before market open and I RDP in every day without a problem. It cost me £200, so for an annual return per £ my pc is untouchable.
See I am not arguing Windows vs Mac... I am arguing why the unnecessary hardware.. Mac cannot use the hardware at all. "Geez let's give it a dual socket procesor motherboard and completely bottle neck the system on the hard drive!" Makes no sense. Apple systems are not strong enough to edit video for the back alleys of Bollywood back when it was ghetto. Think about it... Movies now have DTS-HD. Apple has not figured out HDCP and cant sell you a blu ray drive for 3 grand or they would! Now you are going to edit 100 GBs of HD video for a format that cannot be played on said computer and using a hard drive that will be strained to death? And that doesnt even consider the fact the video card will be old. Remember there is a reason Mac is not known for gaming... They do not know what they are doing hardware wise... And the suppliers dont even care to write drivers for them. Hell they wouldnt care if Apple fell of the earth. They figure they can make up the 6 or so sales elsewhere. Hollywood doesnt use windows either. Their systems are just a skoach stronger than anything any of us have in our homes. I do think it is great how Apple made the new Final Cut Pro incompatible with files made in previous versions and reduced the functionality... It just works! LOL. People that bought the new Final Cut have to use Adobe. Seriously, do they have a clue what they are doing?
This is what I am talking about... Not to upset you, boss, but pretty sure it only 3 months until 2012.. Do you think Apple may have 2011 ready by 2013? I know they are still cranking out 2009, but I too will give them more time.... What you can do in the mean time is just buy the current Mac Pro... Just like every year, they dont get faster... Dont get me wrong, the hardware configurations were impressive at some point before the parts were discontinued. Regardless of what socket you get, the motherboard and hard drives bottleneck you. I am glad you have money to throw around. I hope you teach your children or anyone that looks up to you, to use the "suck on that" logic when reasoning about all decisions in life. When you get your chance to get your shiny Mac Pro, my step kids will be on my then old, water cooled, overclocked core i7 with 24 GBs of 1600 DDR3, RAID 0 SSD, Crossfire graphics computer, watching youtube videos of rats farting on each other faster than you could do it in Safari. Then if they want a Mac, I'll just remove the overclock, download a Mac theme, and make it look like they are running Parallels like every other Mac user does and tell them to "Suck it!" Naw I would probably just beat them like step children Just kidding with ya. Get your new Pro and congrats that you can. Hopefully it runs Paralles faster than anything you have used before! I'll be the guy here on "modern" hardware.
Umm... you're making a little sense, but not a lot of sense.
Meaning.. you're maybe 5% right about their Mac Pro updates being a little delayed/overdue. But comparing Xeon workstation/server hardware to the latest i3, i5, i7 desktop CPU is a bit apples and oranges.
To be honest I can't really read all your text cause its pretty poorly written by my standards. So I'm assuming your're 95% incorrect about everything else or atleast confusing the hell out of me and everyone else with your misunderstanding of professional/business quality hardware vs consumer hardware. Cause in the end, Pro-quality hardware = Xeon CPUs, ECC memory, builtin RAID, etc., not leading edge consumer game machines built on i7 Extreme CPUs.
Have you ever managed a business where an hour (much less a day!?!) of downtime cost real money? I've managed hundreds of servers and having the peace of mind of having a defective HD replaced within a day (while the machine is still running because of a builtin certified RAID) beats going cheap on the initial purchase price and having costly downtime because you didn't build your machine(s) properly or partner with a quality hardware service provider (such as Compaq/HP, IBM/Lenovo, Apple?, etc.) who will provide you with a certified replacement within 24 hours or less.
Sure a fancy consumer gaming PC may work for your needs, but don't rant against those who need or want high-end professional/business quality workstations.
Sorry for the poorly written submissions. I was not aware that it was confusing. Okay, I admit that I do not understand what niche a Mac Pro serves. I see it is supposed to be a workstation. I apologize for being confused by the amd 5870 GAMING card in there. This led me to think it was something for the home since the hard drive capabilities are also pathetic. I now know that this is a system which really is not good at serving any purpose. I could literally build a worksation for about 1/3 the price with 1.5 times cpu performance and exponentially better video performance. As for the quality of the build..... I bet you I can take it apart blindfolded and put it back together exactly the same way. Of course, I would prefer my build to have higher quality parts than you get in the Pro. I am not trying to argue Windows vs Apple. I could care less. I prefer to be able to right click. I simply do not know why the price of a system with old, poor quality parts (No name power supply, aluminum processor cooler, slower RAM, no USB 3.0, old SATA performance, etc. ) costs so much.
As for managing servers and hardware vendors, I think the conversation headed in the wrong direction for a second. "Apple" and "business use" do not even belong in the same sentence. But I digress.
My older brother worked for Apple at one time. He is an absolute fanatic. He would make any Mac fan boy look like Bill Gates. When I ask him what makes it costs so much, he gets this big smile on his face and starts getting all giddy inside. But he can never explain it. Pretty much like everyone else. I kind of wish one day Apple mattered in the Computing world.. Then they would get slapped with Anti Trust and have to open up the garden... Exactly where would they make any money once that happens? Currently they make money from being so restrictive and suck you dry from cradle to grave when you own one of their products. If there were options, I'd be interested in seeing how they handled it.
- In recent polling Mac was listed as the preferred platform for software development.
- Macs have long been the preferred platform for graphic artists (and video editing?).
- Though I haven't seen any polls, Macs are commonly used in the scientific computing field.
- There was a recent segment on 60 Minutes about HFT. Which hardware was on their floor? Mac Pro.
What is their platform for software development? What language? Are they developing Windows software? Just the astronomical difference in Macs vs PCs would lead me to know this is false. I would prefer gold to flow from my sink. I have a feeling Visual Studio is just a wee bit more powerful than the Mac development environment.
As far as graphic design and video editing.. well they are losing this field in a hurry... You cannot develop 3d on a mac.. Well maybe you can, but with the lack of CUDA or OpenGL 3.0, you would be bringing a pillow to a gunfight. Not to mention that a trifired 6950 will beyond obliterate the bargain basement low end 5880 which itself performs 30% faster on WIndows. Combine that with the fact that any compatible software runs at least 10% faster on Windows... So... we are looking at a 10% gain on a at least a 500% gain (VERY CONSERVATIVE) on a 30% gain... Imagine the possiblities these video editors would have if they stopped to think for a second. Apple is getting way out of its league, and judging by the Mac Pro's capabilities.. They know it. Probably dont care. They dont sell enough of these machines to concern themselves with it anymore. Their cash cow rhymes with "thigh bone" not "black hoe"
Scientific computing? Like Folding? or Bitcoining? No they are not. Apple doesnt even have a super computer. Maybe they are used in Mrs Jones 7th grade science class, but for the hard crunching, that goes to computers with power. Apple simply does not sell one. No one even know the name of a scientific application for Apple. Hell no one knows one for Windows. But one thing is certain, tough scientific calculations that require ongoing parallel processing are most certainly not done using Apple anything. This is one of my favorite Apple lies. Just dont even try to pretend it is believable. They had to update their OS with "64 bit optimized" code.... Really? Now that makes me really confident that they even know how to write code for dual socket processors. Yeah....
HFT on a Mac Pro? Wow! That makes no sense.. If you have fast tools available then I would try and use them. You know what.. Wall Street is so smart... They just tricked half the traders to handicap themselves.... Brilliant! They want everyone to think using a Mac Pro is what you should do! Here are some FACTS, we know that Apple does not have anywhere near the fastest processor, no matter how much you spend. FACT their hard drives are literally to slow to be doing anything high speed. I can configure a RAID 0 SSD setup getting 6GB/s each while a Mac Pro at best gets 50% of one sata III SSD let alone 2 in RAID 0. FACT 1066 ECC RAM is the slowest triple channel RAM you can buy. I am not saying you had the privilage of seeing the world's stupidest high frequency traders but I wouldnt be surprised if they were connected wirelessly as well. This made me laugh. Thanks.
I once heard blood was blue until it hit oxygen.. Then one day I realized blood carries oxygen, so it cannot ever be blue... Whatever you think you know about a Mac is simply not true. It cannot perform anything faster. It simply does not have the hardware capabilities. If it can do anything faster, then by all means please share. But I am not talking about running on identical hardware... That is Apple's handicap. Not Windows problem. You want to video edit? By all means, bust out your 5880 and watch our overclocked openGL 3.0 trifired 6890's literally make you a complete and total bitch. Or watch Sata 3 RAID 0 hard drives boot up before your power light comes on. Or see what dual socket processors can do on a motherboard with sufficient bandwidth. Mac Pro's are nothing more than a mid range system. I can build one on newegg that is identical to it except mine will have a faster processor and better video card for less than 4 grand but who would put those parts together without being on acid.
Here is a well articulated video editor expressing his concerns with Apple Pro
Yeah i7 kills it. and you throw in some video card hardware acceleration and I can literally whip the dogpiss out of any Mac with my laptop.
Here is a guy who built a completely stable hackintosh (because it is the same hardware so why wouldnt it be?) for $1300. His performance is actually better than current Mac Pro's because he gets to take advantage of CUDA.
Again, I am not trying to compare Windows and Mac. I just ask why would anyone pay for their hardware. Performance using Apple will never match simply because of Apple. Their is no questioning that.
Like I tried to convey before... 95% wrong...which means I don't disagree with everything you've said, just most of it. Everyone agrees that the Mac Pro is overdue for an update, but guess what, business computing upgrade cycles are not as often as consumer upgrade cycles.
You're not really clued in enough to be speaking so authoritatively about these subjects. You're thoughts are coming from a consumers point of view and not from someone "in the know" in the respective business industries we've been discussing.
It would be a complete waste of my time for me to try to inform you, but here are some quick comments in regards to your recent post:
- Virtualization (runs Windows/Visual Studio on Mac or Linux), enables you to develop for ALL platforms.
- Mac OS X is a BSD derived Unix OS meaning many tools traditionally used on Unix/Linux are available for Mac OS X, such as those in scientific computing.
- I didn't state the HFT firm was using a Mac Pro for HFT, just that they were using the machine as their desktop platform. My guess is they were using Linux for their HFT operations with Mac OS X for prototyping/development and/or as a X11 client because I noticed an X window.
- OpenCL
Just kidding with ya. Get your new Pro and congrats that you can. Hopefully it runs Paralles faster than anything you have used before! I'll be the guy here on "modern" hardware.
