[AndrewRodney]

I'm curious if anyone can comment about this $1450 option of a Raid card with the new 15K SAS drive. Best for a boot disk, a scratch disk for Photoshop?

[iPapa]

Actually, Apple does indeed offer a mid-range Mac. No need to choose between a non-upgradable 2.8GHz iMac or an overkill 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro. Pick a BTO version of the Mac Pro 2.8GHz with 4 cores and you're set. It is upgradable (GPU, hard drives, memory), and you can use any display (this is a great option for those who don't fancy the glossy iMac). Cheap too... in fact it costs the same as the iMac.

[K_C]

iPapa said:

Actually, Apple does indeed offer a mid-range Mac. No need to choose between a non-upgradable 2.8GHz iMac or an overkill 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro. Pick a BTO version of the Mac Pro 2.8GHz with 4 cores and you're set. It is upgradable (GPU, hard drives, memory), and you can use any display (this is a great option for those who don't fancy the glossy iMac). Cheap too... in fact it costs the same as the iMac.

Very good point!

[mdawson]

Here's the problem with your point of view. It's not a big enough market.

And again, you are completely wrong and what I have stated is not opinion but fact. The fact that Apple has opted to treat their pro line as if all professional users are high-end specialized hardware users does not make it so anymore that does your incorrect assessment of pro users. What I have stated is not my point-of-view, it is a correct assessment of the fact that there are two types of power users and the group that needs a tower system are the minority, not the majority. Your failure to recognize that fact does not negate the point.

Maybe you noticed that Apple's Cinema Display's are horribly out of date and over priced relative to the market as well. That's been the case for how long now ? Is Apple doing anything about it ? No, because it's not a big enough market. Major manufacturers are all beating each other up competing in that segment so why should Apple bother.

The Cinema Displays are neither horribly out of date nor are they overpriced. If you actually knew what market segment the Cinema Displays are for then you would realize that,

# the Cinema Displays are still highly rated displays despite their age because they were a good design to begin with;
# the Apple has not produced general-purpose displays since they dropped the Studio Display line early this decade; and,
# as a professional display line, the Cinema Displays are damn inexpensive compared to those from Eizo, NEC and Lacie.

So your argument about the Cinema Displays is just as erroneous as similar arguments focusing on their price and age. Apple has perhaps opted out of the general-purpose display market due to excessive competition, but not offering a display is not the same as not offering a Mac for a particular market segment. Computer users can purchase displays from any number of manufacturers at any price point regardless of their platform choice. But, in the end, Cinema Displays have nothing to do with Apple’s computer product lines.

Maybe you noticed that updates to computers don't happen in line with Macworld or the developers conference as they used to. Why ? Because that let the market dictate Apple sales, as it did for so many years. A slump in sales preceded the annual events as buyers held out for the latest update. Not a good business model. So now the Mac Pro and Xserve updates were unceremoniously announced a week prior to MW. MBPs will be updated in a couple of weeks, when they're ready.

When Apple chooses to announce new systems also has absolutely nothing to do with what types of systems Apple opts to manufacture. You are correct in that sales tended to slum prior to the Macworld conferences in the past as people anticipated new hardware announcements, but overall sales patterns across-the-board slacking before a Macworld conference again has nothing to do with offering a mid-level pro system.

Maybe you also noticed that Apple is no longer Apple computer. They're much more than that and they will continue to broaden their market, not chase the one you suggest is in need of a mid-level Mac.

Apple is not longer called Apple Computer. And? What does that have to do with anything being discussed here? Apple now offers non-computer products, hence the name change, but like everything else you have brought up in your last post, it has absolutely no bearing on the Mac product lines.

The simple fact of the matter is that you cannot defend your position, because it is wrong. Posting a bunch of non sequitur points does not change the fact that exept for those few professional power users that need to be able to add proprietary hardware from the outset as well as retain future upgradeability, towers are excessive. And, except for cubicle jockeys, professional users cannot be stuck with an unexpandable system like the iMac.

[mdawson]

When people refer to a mid-range professional system they are typically writing about a pro system in a smaller form-factor and not one that is less powerful. Yes, people can choose a quad-core 2.8 GHz Mac Pro, but it is still a ginormous tower that offers far more expansion than most pro users need. Apple offers two types of consumer-level systems, but they incorrectly lump all pro users into the tower system category.

[K_C]

Quote

{quote:title=mdawson wrote:}
The simple fact of the matter is that you cannot defend your position, because it is wrong.

Wow, I bow to your superior knowledge. And here I thought this was a place where all opinions were welcome.

[K_C]

Back to the topic at hand. I just finished installing the 4 drives and RAM in my new MP. It's amazing how quiet it is.

What a great computer.

[K_C]

AndrewRodney said:

I'm curious if anyone can comment about this $1450 option of a Raid card with the new 15K SAS drive. Best for a boot disk, a scratch disk for Photoshop?

And how much better would it be than say my choice of 2 10K raptors in a software RAID for scratch ?

I can tell you that replacing the stock boot drive with one of the 10K raptors makes a huge difference.

[mdawson]

No one stated that your opinion is not welcome. We are all willing to debate valid points of argument, but your point about Apple’s displays was incorrect and none of your points had anything to do with professional Macs. So, you were effectively rattling off non sequiturs instead of justifying your position.
Secondly, this issue has been discussed in great detail in the past and it has pretty much been established that all pro/power users need powerful computers with future proofing in the form of an expandable system, but they do not need it in the excessive form factor of a tower. So the market you claim to not exist in actuality is the pro market. The exception, again, are those office professionals that really do not need a high-powered system, but they are a different market segment.
Given Apple’s penchant for having many technologies built onto the motherboard, pro Mac users have even less need of a tower than Wintel PC users that do have a huge selection of mid-range and smaller form factor pro systems to choose from. Towers are again only necessary for those users that need to attach specialized hardware to their Mac out-of-the-box while retaining additional room to grow over the life of the machine—such as those using National Instruments data acquisition and control devices along with LabVIEW®—or, those that have huge on demand storage needs as opposed to being able to store huge amounts of data remotely (e.g., video production). Such users do not constitute the majority of professional power users.
I believe MacCheetah3 that brought the reasonable assessment of Apple’s position on the pro market to the table in a previous discussion. What it came down to is that Apple does not wish to cannibalize profitable tower sales by offering the type of desktop that most pros will gravitate toward. Unlike in the Wintel world, the Mac gaming market is insignificant and it is that market’s demand for high-end towers that would be needed to balance the small number professionals that actually need a tower system. In that scenario Apple could maintain significant tower sales in conjunction with a mini-tower/SFF pro desktop.

[whitedog]

I learned in a previous discussion not to tangle with the the crowd demanding a midrange Mac tower. They are a rabid group and often uncivil in the way they respond to contrary opinions.
That said, the potential market for such a Mac is not any kind of a fact, since there is no midsize Mac available from which to derive any such fact - or facts. Nor, apparently, is there any market research publicly available on which to base even an estimate of the potential market. Were there any, these avid advocates would surely have found and quoted it by now. Apple may or may not have conducted research of their own on the subject. If we assume they have, it would be reasonable to assume as well that the results were not encouraging. If we assume they have not, then they undoubtedly have other reasons for not building a midrange Mac, reasons about which we can only speculate.
It's worth remembering that when Steve Jobs returned to Apple he made drastic cutbacks in the number of Mac models the company produced. He has kept the line Spartan ever since. Despite criticism from many quarters over the years, including those desirous of a Mac mini tower, Steve has continued to cut back on model bloat every time it even hinted at getting out of hand. Two recent victims of this strategy were the 12" MacBook and the 17" iMac.
Now we have the MacBook Air, a lightweight, if not quite sub-notebook computer, filling another niche that has been in demand for some time. This might or might not bode well for the eventual release of a mid range Mac tower, depending on whether you are a glass half full or half empty kind of person.
Frankly, I agree there is probably a viable market for such a Mac, but that's mere surmise. There are many market niches Apple chooses not to compete in, so if they never build a midsize Mac tower it will not be inconsistent with Apple's policies over the last ten years. If they do offer it someday (soon), those hoping for it can shout hosannas and say I told you so - all the way to the Apple Store to acquire their hearts' desire.

[whitedog]

On another matter, those super fast SAS drives look appealing until you consider the size and the price. They offer less than a third the potential capacity in a Mac Pro, compared to standard 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA drives. Even if price is no object, you still have a big tradeoff to consider between performance and capacity.
No doubt using one for your boot drive would improve system start and application launch times, but once programs take off they run in RAM so drive speed is less of a factor. Of course there are other operations that rely on drive performance, like application and system cache and swap files. But you would really need to look at overall seek times, not just drive speed, to get an idea about performance. How much faster are the drive heads, for instance? There are just too many variables to consider. Hopefully Macworld will test a Mac Pro with at least one SAS drive so we can get a better idea how significant they might be.

[splinter]

I am one of those pros that would probably go for a mini-tower if it was available. But at the end of the day, I went for the tower like I have many times before - Quadra 840AV, 8500, G4, and now the speed burner 2.8 8-core. And like before, I'll make the computer pay for itself. In reality, what would the price difference really be between the 4-core tower and a mini-tower? $500? I usually upgrade every 3 or 4 years - this last cycle was longer because I kept waiting. All I did was delay the inevitable, which was not very bright on my part because it just hurt my productivity as my current machine struggled to keep up. When I look back at what I paid for that 840Av - $4500 + $1000(?) for the video card - it's clear that the current tower is really a great deal, even if I won't use all the expansion options.

[lechtmmg]

how would you upgrade a single to a double 8 core sometime in the future

[whitedog]

lechtmmg said:

how would you upgrade a single to a double 8 core sometime in the future

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect it will not be possible for a user to add processor cores in the future. For instance, you cannot now, as far as I know, convert a quad core machine to an eight core machine - because the processor architecture is too different one from the other. You may be able, for instance, to upgrade a 2.8 GHz dual quad core (8 cores) to a 3.2 GHz dual quad core because these are just different iterations of the same chip. But converting a quad core (2 dual core CPUs) to an eight core (two quad core CPUs), or an eight core (2 quad core CPUs) to a sixteen core machine (four quad core CPUs?) will not be feasible.

The rate at which CPU architecture is changing and improving seems to have accelerated in recent years, making backwards compatible daughter cards largely impractical on Intel Macs. At one time the focus was primarily on speed boosts within existing chip families. Now, however, the chip generations themselves are turning over more quickly.

The other issue is cost. As it is, the price difference between a Mac Pro with a 2.8 GHz 8 core CPU and one with a 3.2 GHz CPU is substantial - $1,600. The cost of replacing the slower processor with the faster one after market, assuming it's possible, would probably be prohibitive.

This kind of an upgrade never was inexpensive. Way back when I did upgrade my 233 GHz G3 with a 500 MHz card and was able to squeeze a couple more years out of the old girl before the motherboard failed. But that upgrade covered a wider differential than you could get now, making the $500 I spent on the upgrade card seem more or less reasonable. But I never upgraded the CPU on my dual 1 GHz G4, even though there were some pretty good - though still expensive - upgrades available, primarily because the machine was handicapped by a 1.5 GHz limit on RAM. It never seemed like a good investment. Instead I saved my money for a new computer. It was even possible to upgrade some older Power Macs with a G3 or even a G4 CPU. But I don't think people really got their money's worth because there was nothing you could do about the limitations of the old motherboard - the slower system bus and lack of AltiVec support.

I skipped the G5s altogether and finally got a 3 GHz quad core Mac Pro (refurbished from Apple). It was the fastest Mac available for longer than I expected it would be, but now the new Mac Pros have finally arrived and I must be satisfied with a lower place in the pecking order. This is, of course, inevitable, no matter when you buy a new computer. They are always outdated sooner or later. I don't expect to be able to upgrade it to an 8 core machine, for the reasons mentioned above. And even if I could, it wouldn't have the other speed enhancements of the 8 core Mac Pros - a faster system bus, faster RAM and faster PCI slots.

The Mac Pros are very upgradable, but so far, unless I'm very much mistaken, the CPU is not on the upgrade list. That's not to say that it may not someday be, but I don't think it's a good idea to plan on or expect it to happen. The best strategy is to buy the best Mac you can afford now that is consistent with your needs. If that is a Mac Pro you will have plenty of upgrade options to enhance power and performance for years to come if your needs increase over time.