Pages: [1] 2 3   Go Down

Author Topic: Apple Mac Pro release date  (Read 11255 times)

jerryrock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 608
    • The Grove Street Photographer
Apple Mac Pro release date
« on: December 18, 2013, 07:25:03 pm »

The 2013 Mac Pro will be available to purchase on December 19, 2013.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/12/18All-New-Mac-Pro-Available-Starting-Tomorrow.html

I ordered the base configuration of the higher end model, 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory, Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM each, 256GB PCIe-based flash storage. I also ordered the Promise Pegasus2 R4 8GB Raid Storage and a 2 meter Thunderbolt cable. The total with tax came to $5,979.96.
The MacPro does not ship until December 30 with a delivery date of January 7, 2014. There is no expedited shipping option.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2013, 04:16:39 am by jerryrock »
Logged
Gerald J Skrocki

westfreeman

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 32
    • West Freeman Photography
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #1 on: December 18, 2013, 09:44:19 pm »

We will finally get to see what some of the upgrade pricing will be and how long the ship time will be also. 
Logged

Josh-H

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2079
    • Wild Nature Photo Travel
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2013, 09:53:07 pm »

OWC already has after market RAM pricing on their website for the new Mac Pro.
Logged
Wild Nature Photo Travel

BernardLanguillier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13983
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlanguillier/sets/
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #3 on: December 19, 2013, 03:26:54 am »

OWC already has after market RAM pricing on their website for the new Mac Pro.

Yes, but contrary to earlier claims, it is only up to 64GB and not 128GB...

Besides, it may not be that much cheaper compared to the Apple pricing if rumors are correct.

We'll know in a few hours.

Cheers,
Bernard

phila

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 327
    • www.philaphoto.com
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #4 on: December 19, 2013, 03:51:24 am »

We know now!

NB: Oz pricing.

What I'm after -  4 core BTO:

3.5GHz – 6 core

32GB RAM ($600.00 - which is less than $100 over the OWC price)

512GB flash

Apple Care

Total = $5,887.99

Which is pretty much what I paid for my 2008 MacPro back in the day. I'm a happy boy!
« Last Edit: December 19, 2013, 04:00:57 am by phila »
Logged

Josh-H

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2079
    • Wild Nature Photo Travel
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #5 on: December 19, 2013, 04:08:12 am »

Quote
Yes, but contrary to earlier claims, it is only up to 64GB and not 128GB...

Just one of the reasons I opted for a late 2012 8-core Mac Pro (which CAN take 128 GB of RAM); which I picked up a month ago for a bargain price of $2000 with an Apple RAID Card. I put 64 GB of memory in it and it owes me 3k. I have no requirement to purchase expensive external thunderbolt drive chassis either...

I just priced up the new machine equivalent and its over $8,800 here in Australia before I add an external Thunderbolt 2 Chassis....

There is smart money spent.. and then.. well you get my drift... ;D
« Last Edit: December 19, 2013, 04:25:45 am by Josh-H »
Logged
Wild Nature Photo Travel

phila

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 327
    • www.philaphoto.com
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #6 on: December 19, 2013, 04:52:00 am »

Hey Josh... I've got a nice new EOS 1D MkIV here if you'd like to buy it!  ;)

Josh-H

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2079
    • Wild Nature Photo Travel
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #7 on: December 19, 2013, 04:53:09 am »

Hey Josh... I've got a nice new EOS 1D MkIV here if you'd like to buy it!  ;)

LOL I have a 1DS MK3 here I am still shooting with! (its my 1DX back up :-)
Logged
Wild Nature Photo Travel

phila

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 327
    • www.philaphoto.com
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #8 on: December 19, 2013, 05:12:30 am »

LOL I have a 1DS MK3 here I am still shooting with! (its my 1DX back up :-)

That's my set up as well.

aragdog

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 49
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #9 on: December 19, 2013, 12:27:42 pm »

What are you all doing for connections and what other drive enclosures are you going to use.? There is some concerns if OWC memory voids the apple support for the computer.  At least my apple var tells me so. I am going with the 8 core for some video work we do.
Logged

phila

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 327
    • www.philaphoto.com
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #10 on: December 20, 2013, 01:34:57 am »

I'm planning on a couple of these (which are listed to be available as bare enclosures here):

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/Elite-Dual-RAID


And one of these to connect my existing FirmTek 4 bay enclosure:

http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/thundertek/pxq6g/

The price difference (with exchange rates etc) is small enough that I'm actually ordering it with 32GB of Apple RAM!

jerryrock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 608
    • The Grove Street Photographer
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #11 on: December 25, 2013, 10:31:30 am »

The first shipments of The 2013 MacPro have arrived earlier than expected. While higher end units (8 and 12 core Xeon E-5 processors) were seeded to businesses for beta testing and marketing, the stock versions,  ($2,999 4 core 3.7Ghz and $3,999 6 core 3.5Ghz) have not yet been available until now for testing or reviewing.

Reports of first shipments being received before the Christmas Holiday are now appearing.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/24/first-mac-pros-begin-arriving-ahead-of-christmas/

Apple also upped my delivery date from January 7 to January 3rd.
Logged
Gerald J Skrocki

Alan Goldhammer

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4344
    • A Goldhammer Photography
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #12 on: December 26, 2013, 03:20:45 pm »

I was curious to try to figure out what the premium is for the Mac Pro after reading the New York Times article today.  I got the specifications from the Apple Website and priced components out for a DIY build (though obviously without Apple OS) and it looks like for the high end:  Xeon 12 core CPU, 64GB RAM, double AMD GPU (though not the one Apple has in the Mac Pro as I'm sure that is sourced to their own specifications rather than what is available to consumers), etc and I get a parts cost of just under $5K versus a retail price of over $9K as outlined in the NYT article.  I'm sure the the mark up is more than that given Apple is surely getting hefty discounts from AMD, Intel, and whoever manufactures the RAM.  I'm also interested in how they cool the Mac Pro and keep the weight down to 11 pounds.  My current build weighs over 20 lbs and doesn't include nearly that computing power.
Logged

Chris Kern

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2034
    • Chris Kern's Eponymous Website
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #13 on: December 26, 2013, 04:37:46 pm »

I was curious to try to figure out what the premium is for the Mac Pro after reading the New York Times article today.  I got the specifications from the Apple Website and priced components out for a DIY build (though obviously without Apple OS) and it looks like for the high end:  Xeon 12 core CPU, 64GB RAM, double AMD GPU (though not the one Apple has in the Mac Pro as I'm sure that is sourced to their own specifications rather than what is available to consumers), etc and I get a parts cost of just under $5K versus a retail price of over $9K as outlined in the NYT article.  I'm sure the the mark up is more than that given Apple is surely getting hefty discounts from AMD, Intel, and whoever manufactures the RAM.  I'm also interested in how they cool the Mac Pro and keep the weight down to 11 pounds.  My current build weighs over 20 lbs and doesn't include nearly that computing power.

After trying to match as closely as possible the specs of all the the Apple-sourced components in the top-of-the-line $9.6K Mac Pro configuration, including the GPUs, AppleInsider came up with a retail parts cost for a comparable MS-Windows configuration of $14,309: http://tinyurl.com/mrvyt24.  Aside from the microprocessor, the items dominating the aggregate cost were the GPUs and the 1 TB flash drive—precisely the items which Apple, as a volume special-order purchaser, is ideally positioned to acquire premium components at a price unavailable to consumers.

Alan Goldhammer

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4344
    • A Goldhammer Photography
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #14 on: December 26, 2013, 05:39:05 pm »

@Kris - Thanks for the link.  You can get the CPU and memory for less than they did and I'm really questioning whether one needs to spend that much on the dual GPUs (I couldn't find these for sale and chose the the newest AMD GPUs which had less RAM per unit.  OCZ is now bankrupt and owned by Toshiba so it's questionable whether that flash drive is still available or even needed.  I'm still curious how Apple cools the unit with that CPU and dual graphics cards.  Certainly in the PC DIY community we spend a lot of time and effort figuring out the best way to cool the systems (though gamers worry about this far more than those of us who just do photo editing).  I'm still comfortable in saying that for just photo editing one can build a system that will run LR and PS just fine for a lot less money (video editing is another matter entirely).  The only thing one cannot get at this point is Thunderbolt compatible motherboards for the Xeon CPU; they are available for high end Haswell CPUs right now but one would drop down the number of cores but it's still questionable whether most of us would really see the difference.
Logged

BernardLanguillier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13983
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlanguillier/sets/
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #15 on: December 26, 2013, 07:13:41 pm »

What the Mac Pro has to be compared with are workstations from Dell and HP, not home made boxes.

Apple has obviously spent more engineer CPU time than any other workstation manufacturer when designing the new Pro. I would dare to say that this is pretty much the only innovative desktop computer north of year 2000. That must have a significant cost but it doesn't seem to impact too much retail pricing compared to parts list prices. It simply makes to other WS look way overpriced in my book.

There are many things Apple does I do not like, starting with the accelerated pace of OS upgrades, but the new Mac Pro gets my bravo!

Yes, you can build a fast machine for a lot less money, but that means you need to be willing to spend your evenings trouble shooting your system. That is PC hobbying, not photography image processing.

I used to do that, now I'd rather spend time in DxO or PTgui. ;)

Cheers,
Bernard
« Last Edit: December 26, 2013, 07:16:09 pm by BernardLanguillier »
Logged

Chris Kern

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2034
    • Chris Kern's Eponymous Website
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #16 on: December 26, 2013, 11:08:32 pm »

I'm still curious how Apple cools the unit with that CPU and dual graphics cards.

Long ago, and in a galaxy far away, I had a conversation with a thermal design engineer for DEC, the Digital Equipment Corporation (remember them?), about how to cool minicomputers composed of zillions of discrete components.  His prescription was counterintuitive: "pack the circuit boards tightly."  The objective was to permit the fans to move air very rapidly directly across the components.  He argued that "empty space is the enemy of heat dissipation.  You wind up creating little eddies and pockets of stagnant air that actually trap heat."

He was a member of the team that worked on the VAX 11/780, which was probably the best-known of the 32-bit systems of the minicomputer era.  Also one of the noisiest.  A couple of VAXen in a small machine room sounded like a pair of jet engines throttling-up for takeoff.  (Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration.)

Anyway, the heat-dissipation model of the Mac Pro appears to follow the principle explained to me by the DEC engineer, but not the example of the 11/780; according the the early reviewers, the machine is almost silent—even during operations that require high CPU and GPU utilization.

Chris Kern

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2034
    • Chris Kern's Eponymous Website
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #17 on: December 26, 2013, 11:40:31 pm »

What the Mac Pro has to be compared with are workstations from Dell and HP, not home made boxes. . . .

Apple has obviously spent more engineer CPU time than any other workstation manufacturer when designing the new Pro. I would dare to say that this is pretty much the only innovative desktop computer north of year 2000.

Dell and HP boxes aren't so much designed as specified with the components required for assembly, and badged with the manufacturer's logotypes.  That's the great strength, and greatest weakness, of the WIntel machines.  Because they're composed of commodity parts, at a given price-point they're all pretty much the same.  But also because they're composed of commodity parts, selective upgrading is essentially trivial.

Quote
Yes, you can build a fast machine for a lot less money, but that means you need to be willing to spend your evenings trouble shooting your system. That is PC hobbying, not photography image processing.

Well, I agree with your second proposition.  I'm not sure about the first.  I have a strong software background, but know very little about computing hardware.  Still, I had no difficulty assembling several generations of Intel-based machines.  (Mostly to run UNIX, but they all worked fine with MS-Windows.)  The only real difficulties I encountered involved getting the high-tolerance mechanical parts to fit together neatly.  The electronics always fired up the first time power was applied, and rarely experienced any failures.

For me, at least, the real issue is the operating system.  I'm partial to UNIX—and, although Apple's variant has some attributes that irritate me, I find it a lot more congenial than any rev of MS-Windows I've ever run.

Although I also confess to deriving some esthetic pleasure from using Apple hardware.

Alan Goldhammer

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4344
    • A Goldhammer Photography
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #18 on: December 27, 2013, 09:17:17 am »

Long ago, and in a galaxy far away, I had a conversation with a thermal design engineer for DEC, the Digital Equipment Corporation (remember them?), about how to cool minicomputers composed of zillions of discrete components.  His prescription was counterintuitive: "pack the circuit boards tightly."  The objective was to permit the fans to move air very rapidly directly across the components.  He argued that "empty space is the enemy of heat dissipation.  You wind up creating little eddies and pockets of stagnant air that actually trap heat."
LOL!  When I was a post-doc at Cornell in the late 1970s we had a DEC PDP 11 in the lab with a basic teletype (the DecWriter dot printer had not yet come out) and this thing was loud.  It also took time to boot it up each morning as you had to go through a bunch of toggle switch addresses and feed in punched paper tape instructions.  To optimize things programming was done in assembly language and it was a PITA to do even basic things.  I venture to say, modern desktop units have much more computing power!
Logged

Alan Goldhammer

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4344
    • A Goldhammer Photography
Re: Apple Mac Pro release date
« Reply #19 on: December 27, 2013, 09:27:10 am »

Yes, you can build a fast machine for a lot less money, but that means you need to be willing to spend your evenings trouble shooting your system. That is PC hobbying, not photography image processing.
Not really.  I can build a top end desktop PC in about 90 minutes and get it up and running in 1/2 a day.  OS installation and configuration takes the most time.  Once it's up and running it's pretty much maintenance free.  I only use top end parts and in over a dozen builds (computers for friends & family) I've only had one defective motherboard at installation.  I don't have to pay any money for a service contract (not that I've needed any, I can't remember and part failures in built systems).  I've only done a little bit of pano work but my i7 build seems to handle stitching just fine.  It's not clear in terms of how Adobe has optimized PS and whether the top end Mac Pro with 12 cores is needed.
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3   Go Up