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Comment by zdw | Hacker News Reader

The new Mac Pro forces all device makers to use interfaces that are compatible with the entire range of Apple hardware.

There's no "oh, we only have a card, you have to have a machine with slots" anymore - every machine, from the lowliest Mac Minis and MacBooks to the highest end Mac Pro will be able to use the same peripherals.

I think this is the end goal. Apple's computers will scale along the CPU and GPU performance and memory size axes, with everything else being an peripheral you can theoretically move to any computer you own.

It's a bold move.

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+1 for the extinction of cards and slots.

One of the most nerve-wracking moments of my (former) life as a recording engineer was installing a brand new Pro Tools card into a brand new Mac Pro at Aereosmith's studio. For whatever reason, the fit was way tighter than normal and I literally had to put some of my body weight over the thing to get it to slide in. All the while, just wondering how I was going to explain to Joe Perry that I had snapped a $6k Pro Tools card in half. Luckily, I didn't have to.

Combining voices with the person in this thread asking about external GPUs, I long for the day when we can have powerful Thunderbolt GPUs. High-end video cards are becoming ever larger with each generation, to the point where I had to upgrade my case and motherboard when I upgraded my video card last time. I just couldn't fit the card in the case, and the card suddenly overlapped parts on the motherboard that weren't a problem previously.

The problem of hard drives taking up too much room in a case is solved. The problem of expansion cards taking up too much room in a case is solved. If we could get that to video cards as well, we can throw the whole concept of massive cases in traditional form factors being required for high end workstations right out the window.

The problem with Thunderbolt is a bandwidth one and Apple's support: PCIe 16x is 128 gbps bi-directional, Thunderbolt 2 is 20 gbps. Putting it just over 4x PCIe.

Currently Windows supports graphics cards via Thunderbolt but OS X doesn't. There's also no guarantee Apple support drivers for external PCIe graphics chipsets.

Maybe in 3 years Thunderbolt 3 will be 128 gbps but PCIe will hit its next iteration putting it that much further beyond. Thunderbolt is awesome as an I/O setup but for graphically minded individuals, its still not as amazing as one might hope.

> Currently Windows supports graphics cards via Thunderbolt but OS X doesn't.

Citation? From a software perspective, Thunderbolt is just hotpluggable PCIe. There's not much that can be done to prevent compatibility with a GPU connected via Thunderbolt, especially when the OS already supports switchable graphics. From what I've read, the biggest challenge to using an external GPU enclosure with a Mac is getting a GPU that OS X has drivers for, not anything Thunderbolt-related.

That is an extremely interesting take which I hadn't considered, especially when considering rMBPs have two TB ports.

The scaling across the range would be much smoother if they released a headless mid-range machine, rather than relying entirely on iMacs (and laptops) to fill the gap between the Mini and the Pro. They seem quite actively disinterested in building such a machine, though.

It's a common complaint: here's a blogpost from 2007 called "Where's the Mac?" http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2007/08/08/wheres-the-mac/ . Midrange desktops are probably still where the buyers are most price/performance-conscious, and where design/engineering effort makes the least difference: Apple probably wants to avoid competing on that kind of terrain. They may also be worried about people who would opt for a midrange Mac over a Mac Pro if given the option.

A laptop in clamshell mode is a good substitute for a headless mid-range machine. Combine it with a BookArc stand to avoid wasting desk space and it's hard to beat.

Depends what you're looking for GPU-wise (which is also one of the frustrations of the iMac range). Also, slower CPUs and memory limited to 16Gb.

In many respects, the new Mac Pro is exactly the all-round machine (development, scientific computing, plus the odd game) I've been waiting for. If it shows up with a reasonable low-end version, I'd buy it in a flash (or even sooner, given an Nvidia GPU option). But Apple have been very wary about releasing mid-range machines which might cannibalise iMac sales, so I'm not holding my breath.

The Mac Pro design looks like a better template for a mid-to-high end desktop - at least if the Thunderbolt market matures enough. It would have downsides compared to a conventional PCI-E-motherboard PC, but it would be a unique and interesting option. I don't think it can really cut it as a substitute for a meat-eating high-end workstation though. (Compare: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X9D... - two Xeons and up to half a TiB of RAM in 16 sockets, never mind about PCI-E.)

Maybe most professional audio guys don't actually require a serious workstation anymore; I'm sure Apple is calculating or hoping that it will be good enough for enough video editors too. It's hard to see the 2013 Mac Pro getting under the desks at Pixar, but presumably Apple feels willing to give up on that end of the market.

This only works if the laptop is designed to be used in clamshell mode - ie, if you tax the processors and the thermal venting isn't adequate it will either fail or ruin the lifespan of the components.

The Macs are designed to run this way as far as I can tell.

Isn't that how Reddit started? Hosted on a laptop. I read that somewhere. They had to keep it around to restart the server every few hours.

Best part about hosting on a headless laptop: built-in UPS in case you have a power dip or somebody knocks the power strip out.

I've wondered: if computer makers sold laptops with lights-out-management and detachable displays, would people would repurpose them into makeshift mobile servers and design entire server farms around them, like they have with the Mac Mini. You could have a work/coding environment where if somebody needs to take home the dev server to hack on it overnight, they pull it out of the rack, slap on a display, use it any other laptop, and bring it back in the morning to plug back in.

The Mini is supposed to be that, ideally. The graphics are the bottleneck, but they'll get better as the Intel integrated graphics pipeline improves.

This has always been their plan. They tried this with the original Macintosh and it's successors. Up until now the PC market was growing too fast for them to get away with it. Now with the "Post-PC era" they're giving it another shot. I think it's an interesting idea, each external peripheral does one thing well. It reflects their current advertising and their product lines.

Is thunderbolt fast enough to drive a high end GPU?

Fast external GPUs are my dream. I can buy a convenient sized laptop with excellent specs in every category except for GPU. As soon as I want a good GPU, the laptop has to become a 10lb monster.

I want to just dock it at my home desk with the GPU and convert my laptop into essentially a desktop workstation. Then I can undock it and take it out to the coffeeshop when I want to work outside. Maybe the external GPU is tiny too, and I can throw that in my backpack with it when I want to do gamedev work outside the house.

I don't think external GPUs are part of Apple's plan. The GPU comes inside the Mac, and if you want to upgrade it you can buy a new Mac.

OS X interestingly forgoes external graphics PCIe support (for now) with Thunderbolt. Windows supports it. Also Windows, since Windows 7 supports 24+ bit panels (think Dell Ultrasharp U2711), OS X is still stuck on 16.7 million.

Lately, I haven't felt like Apple has my back for pro-A/V :/

That would seem very expensive.

Component upgrade costs are always cheaper than replacing the entire system, but what is the cost delta between replacing two GPUs and a CPU versus replacing the system. We don't know the cost for the Mac Pro yet, but given it's size and the limited number of components that are internal, it would appear to be optimized for system-level replacement.

What Apple has designed could be described as a laptop for your desk. Sales of systems where the CPU/GPU are upgradable are plummeting. The market is driving computers in this direction.

That seems a shame , upgradeability has always let me have a relatively high performance system without breaking the bank.

I don't necessarily want a top end CPU, but I like a decent GPU and a lot of memory.

Not to mention the environmental factors.

I empathize, but the Mac Pro hasn't really been an option for anyone not looking to break the bank. If you're in to building your own systems, there are always other options:

OS X system guides - http://www.tonymacx86.com/

External GPUs are not cheap too!

Perfect(for Apple)!

It's basically a PCIe x4 interface, so it's about 1/4 the bandwidth of most high-end video cards, and you should be able to make an external enclosure for them. So yes, it's possible to add one, it just won't be quite as fast.

More likely, you've got 2 upgradeable graphics cards in there, already running in an SLI configuration. It should be entirely upgradeable.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but since the video cards share the same thermal core, I'm not sure they are going to be easy to upgrade anymore.

Yes. You'd have to remove the stock heatsink and fans from the card you were putting in, which would surely invalidate its warranty straight away. Then you'd have to somehow mate it with the heatsink bases on that side of the Mac Pro's thermal core, not something that's not likely to be straightforward if the replacement card's make and model don't closely match that of the stock card it's replacing. And that's just the beginning of the possible problems.

Every indication seems to be the cards inside the Mac Pro are not upgradeable.

"It became necessary to destroy the Mac Pro to save it"

> It's a bold move.

No. It's "letting people use their device in a non-retarded way".

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