I don't see how this is a mass market design. It's a bunch of Xeons cores paired with ECC RAM, stupid-fast storage, and way more GPU power than any reasonable person can use. And probably priced to match.
But, coupled with zero internal expansion, no spinning disk bays, and a small number of RAM slots.
I can't really tell to whom the product is targeted, honestly. If I were buying a Mac Pro for work, I'd want the expand ability. If I were a consumer buying a desktop, I'd get an iMac or mini.
Indeed, I've been using the same Mac Pro since 2008. I bought an ATI Radeon 6970 around a year or so ago and extended its life that much more. For most of my computer's life, its had a PCIe eSATA card.
I can't say I'm too excited about a computer that's relegated to an much more expensive Mac Mini.
So on top of the almost-certainly really expensive Mac Pro, you now also need to get the really expensive PCIe expansion enclosure on top of it? Or did I miss nvidia or ati making thunderbolt video cards?
This is why the idea that this makes sense for professional users is silly. It's just asking them to spend a lot more money for something that's been possible with standard case designs for decades. The old Mac Pro was already a bit silly with its chassis that seemed designed to survive a car crash, but this one just takes the cake.
The cooling system design is innovative and interesting on its own, but this continues the trend of the Mac Pro being a check box for Apple instead of a real product.
The existing Mac Pro has four drive bays. That number seems to be too many, or way too few, never quite right. This design seems to surrender to the fact that one stupidly fast SSD is good enough to build a base, and the rest can be attached externally.
NVidia and AMD have been making external video cards for a while now using external PCIe, but they haven't sold very well and support for these sorts of connectors is limited. Thunderbolt 2 should eventually change that.
Apple's in a bit of a tough spot here. The Mac Pro can never be fast enough or big enough for some, and the bigger and faster they make it, the more it becomes overkill for those that just need something more serious than an iMac or Mac Mini.
I was looking at that kind of thing as well and the only thing that's worth noting is that I think a lot of video cards currently actively used are only 16x so they can be run on older motherboards with pcie 1 or 2.
It's not clear that thunderbolt 2 isn't enough bandwidth to effectively run a video card, though I think you'd probably run into problems daisy chaining video cards with video cards or trying to run two out of one enclosure.
I assume he is referring to the strange decision to make the thing so small (and beautiful) at the expense of any internal expandability. So professionals are going to have all sorts of hard drives and external graphics cards and optical drives etc hanging off this thing.
sorry if I am barking up the wrong tree.. but do you think it will be beautiful with all the breakout cables ?
For me this whole thing looks like a blast from the past - my trusty C64 with everything outside the box (and there were some articles in the 64er magazine [german magazine] which showed how to build everything into a single case for the neat, "integrated" look)
I think for many people it will be a beautiful black cylinder on a cluttered desktop. For people who need to use expansions this will take up a significantly larger footprint than a machine that allows for internal expansion.
For those that put the machine under their desk it will just be a mess of cables and things to kick over.
Third parties are going to have a field day designing accessories to this that will do away with the clutter. A six pronged lightning plug that splits into a meta-rack monolithic black box. Done.
The whining about this product is expected but so misguided.
This is just blind speculation (I am not apple [power] user, nor have I owned the new mac pro):
Maybe (sacrificing customizability[?] for portability) + (somewhat superficial/look change maybe for change's sake) + (lack of (water cooling, cd/dvd/bluray%, power surge supply/protector thingy%, raid%)) != professional market?
% = if you want these, there goes some of the portability/simplicity. (unless apple monitor usually has cd drive?)
I might be off the mark, feedback welcome. Maybe this is enough for most creative professionals? Video/3d/gaming/some programming/some engineering might be somewhat infinite in appetite for processing power and all, I would think.
My thoughts having never owned a Mac Pro (though on my 2nd MacBook Pro): SAN/NAS + the near uselessness of internal optical drives.
In a "professional" environment, large storage is on the network, redundant, with regular backups (preferably including off-site backup). The more important the data is, the less likely anyone wants it sitting on someone's desktop any longer than necessary for that person to do their job.
The handful of people using Mac Pros in my work environment generate and store massive amounts of data, but they don't store it on their desktop indefinitely.
Weird industrial design != mass market.