Mac Pro's future

Everyone keeps saying that the Mac Pro will be discontinued someday. However Macs are commonly used in the creative field and for media production. These types of tasks are CPU intensive. Even Xcode takes a while to compile when the programs get of considerable size. Hackintoshes rarely work well with xcode especially when considering the credentials that are needed to be passed to the iPad or iPhone for certification and the numerous dev updates that are commonly given out by Apple. It also seems counterintuitive that Apple would force developers to use hacked computers to create software for their device.

With that said the most powerful computer other than the Mac Pro that a developer could buy is an iMac. While be top-of-the-line iMac is a powerful computer it does not offer the expandability that developers need especially for intensive media productions and large code projects.

If anything Apple would need to keep the Mac Pro around just for developers to produce products for Apple. People keep quoting the sales numbers for the Mac Pro however the Mac Pro is certainly not a consumer device so comparing it to the sales of high-volume consumer devices is not a good way to predict the future of the device.

I think the Mac Pro will be with us for quite a while maybe not in the same capacity that it is now however Apple still needs to provide a powerful Mac solution for developers to create programs and media on for Apple products.

So if you guys believe that the Mac Pro will be discontinued how do you think that developers will create Apple software in the future?

I work in the creative field. We've got tons of old Mac Pros laying around this office, and a few new ones in the production room. The reality is that the MacBook Pro has pretty much replaced the Mac Pro in the creative field for almost everything except the most hardcore rendering.

The biggest draw to the Mac Pro for daily use was that you could give it a lot of RAM and run multiple displays. That's all possible now with the MacBook Pro. Transcoding is more efficient (and cheaper) with dedicated hardware than it is on the CPU. There are very few applications or workflows that actually need what the Mac Pro offers. The Mac Pro is pretty much exclusively for someone who needs more than 4 cores of CPU power and more than 16GB of memory. There aren't a lot of workflows or applications that reach into that space, and those that do are often better of just offloading that processing to dedicated hardware. You can throw $5,000 worth of Xeon cores at H.264 encoding, or you can just buy a $150 USB hardware encoder. Even PCIe cards can now run externally over Thunderbolt.

I've worked with a number of startups and iOS app developers and I don't know of a single person who uses a Mac Pro for development. All MacBooks or iMacs. The only people I know who use Mac Pros are creative production folks, and it's mostly for the multiple displays. Only a single person in our office actually uses the horsepower for video.

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Originally Posted by ImaNihilist

I work in the creative field. We've got tons of old Mac Pros laying around this office, and a few new ones in the production room. The reality is that the MacBook Pro has pretty much replaced the Mac Pro in the creative field for almost everything except the most hardcore rendering.

The biggest draw to the Mac Pro for daily use was that you could give it a lot of RAM and run multiple displays. That's all possible now with the MacBook Pro. Transcoding is more efficient (and cheaper) with dedicated hardware than it is on the CPU. There are very few applications or workflows that actually need what the Mac Pro offers. The Mac Pro is pretty much exclusively for someone who needs more than 4 cores of CPU power and more than 16GB of memory. There aren't a lot of workflows or applications that reach into that space, and those that do are often better of just offloading that processing to dedicated hardware. You can throw $5,000 worth of Xeon cores at H.264 encoding, or you can just buy a $150 USB hardware encoder. Even PCIe cards can now run externally over Thunderbolt.

I've worked with a number of startups and iOS app developers and I don't know of a single person who uses a Mac Pro for development. All MacBooks or iMacs. The only people I know who use Mac Pros are creative production folks, and it's mostly for the multiple displays. Only a single person in our office actually uses the horsepower for video.

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I've been using my Ivy MacBook Pro hooked to a 27" 2560x1440 screen and it does run amiably. However, any work in 3D destroys it especially when ray tracing to do a final render. I have to switch over to my main computer to render out a scene. I'm sure the top of the line MacBook Pro could do it faster, but I'm doing pretty trivial scenes. Nothing like what major iOS developers use. A lot of finished 2D work is actually done in 3D to get the perspective, shadows, and lighting correct.

My point was that there are people at the top of the field that need the power to create applications for iOS and Mac devices. Apple couldn't possibly force them to go buy a PC or wait hours to compile/render on a MacBook or iMac. Even thought the market is extremely small, the people that use them are the foundation for the ecosystem because they are the creators.

I wouldn't be surprised if they moved towards a more modular solution for high end development and dropped the normal Mac Pro line. Is having 6 thunderbird dongles hanging off a MacBook Pro really the future of high end development?

What are you rendering? What software? How much RAM? Most of the rendering of 3D assets for iOS is surprisingly low quality. Sure, a game like Infinity Blade has requires quite a bit of power to render, but that's really the exception. We are talking about <1% of all iOS assets. Even an older MacBook Pro can handle simple 3D stuff in Photoshop/Motion and After Effects without much issue. I mean if you're running Maya, well, yeah. 12 cores and a desktop CPU is going to be a hell of a lot faster than 4 cores and a notebook GPU, but if you aren't…

I suspect the future is a bunch of different boxes connected to a notebook. The nice thing about Thunderbolt is there is no series of dongles. Everything daisy chains. It's just one cable.

Tim Cook said on the record that there will be an entirely new Mac for pro users in 2013. Despite the insane profit margins Apple doesn't actually make any money at all on the Mac Pro compared to their other products, but it's important to keep the mindshare among those users. My friends who work in video production still rely on Mac Pros for example.

There's still a market for a high-end headless Mac. Say you need a workstation with one of those Eizo monitors with super precise colour reproduction or whatever. The iMac display is gorgeous, but it's just not good for that.

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Originally Posted by ImaNihilist

What are you rendering? What software? How much RAM? Most of the rendering of 3D assets for iOS is surprisingly low quality. Sure, a game like Infinity Blade has requires quite a bit of power to render, but that's really the exception. We are talking about <1% of all iOS assets. Even an older MacBook Pro can handle simple 3D stuff in Photoshop/Motion and After Effects without much issue. I mean if you're running Maya, well, yeah. 12 cores and a desktop CPU is going to be a hell of a lot faster than 4 cores and a notebook GPU, but if you aren't…

I suspect the future is a bunch of different boxes connected to a notebook. The nice thing about Thunderbolt is there is no series of dongles. Everything daisy chains. It's just one cable.

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For example, a few nights ago I was making a background for an iPad application. I mocked up a rudimentary 3D model in Google Sketchup. I then imported this into Photoshop CS6 to apply textures and render the model into the scene. Not only did manipulating the 3D model into perspective bog the Mac, but doing a final render would take over an hour. This was just a simple background. I exported the project to my main computer and used the OpenGL render option in Photoshop CS5 (don't have CS6 on my main rig yet) to do a final render in only 4 minutes.

Obviously a lot of iOS apps do not use 3D renders to make backdrops, but a lot of them do such as games. The developers of these apps need a top-of-the-line rig to perform this work on. It just seems strange to me that Apple would offer such a comprehensive line of development tools, but not also offer hardware good enough for all development needs.

My Ivy Macbook Pro has 8GB of RAM. CPU does not matter nearly as much for this type of application. A discrete GPU does, which without the Mac Pro, the highest offering would be a consumer level 6970M. That could be fine, but if we are talking about a moderately complicated game, then it isn't uncommon to have 40 3D renders to perform. I'd hate to have to wait possibly days to render those or to make small changes. This is especially true now that the supported resolutions have skyrocketed with Retina. Now developers have to render even larger resolution assets.

Its also a pain in the *** to have 6 boxes sitting around on the table. Until Daisy Chain display port is launched, you need a Dual/Triple head to go to get multiple screens on a MacBook Pro. You would then need a thunderbird hub to add more items such as an external GPU or external render box. IMO the best way would be to virtual box into a server to do a render, but that eliminates the indie dev.

I think the future of rendering for most pro's will be a server on the network. You do all of your work on the laptop, and then send it to the server to render. Also, you need to upgrade to 16GB of RAM. It's cheap. :p

*Edit: Didn't I see something about CS6 support render nodes now?

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Originally Posted by James

I think the future of rendering for most pro's will be a server on the network. You do all of your work on the laptop, and then send it to the server to render. Also, you need to upgrade to 16GB of RAM. It's cheap. :p

*Edit: Didn't I see something about CS6 support render nodes now?

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I've been meaning upgrade to 16GB on my desktop, but honestly I've never hit the 8GB cap right now. I don't "multitask" much, I usually focus on one program and close out the others. The Mac however, could use more than 8GB. I tend to run a lot more programs on it, since it brings everything together. With a few Xcode projects, CS6, Safari, iOS simulator, and a few others going it can get rough. I don't think my Macbook Pro can upgrade to 16GB though.

Apple doesn't offer much in the form of server solutions, which is why I said earlier that I would not be surprised if the Mac Pro line moves toward a modular, server design. Apple exiting the high end, professional arena does not seem possible though since they need to support the developers. Its just strange that Apple sings the virtues of their ecosystem, yet developers would be forced to use PCs to create the apps. :)

I wonder if you are actually seeing a CPU bottleneck or something else, like little-to-no GPU acceleration.

Photoshop 3D performance is better on Windows than on OS X. And trying to do 3D on an Intel IGP is a lost cause, even with Ivy Bridge. When you run Photoshop on a Windows desktop all the 3D rendering is done on the video card.

When I say people use MacBook Pro's instead of Mac Pros I'm not talking about the 13". It's exclusively the 15". The only person in my office with a 13" is actually me, because I bring my own machine.

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Originally Posted by ImaNihilist

I wonder if you are actually seeing a CPU bottleneck or something else, like little-to-no GPU acceleration.

Photoshop 3D performance is better on Windows than on OS X. And trying to do 3D on an Intel IGP is a lost cause, even with Ivy Bridge. When you run Photoshop on a Windows desktop all the 3D rendering is done on the video card.

When I say people use MacBook Pro's instead of Mac Pros I'm not talking about the 13". It's exclusively the 15". The only person in my office with a 13" is actually me, because I bring my own machine.

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I plan on getting an iMac when they release the refresh. I'm finding the MacBook Pro 13" to not be up to what I need as a primary development computer. I haven't decided if I am going to keep it or sell it to recoup some of the cost yet. I didn't know what to expect when I started down this road, so I don't regret buying it. It's damn fast for normal activities. I'm extremely happy that I didn't get an Air though. The SSD would already be pretty full unless I went with a 256GB model, but that was expensive especially with the 8GB of RAM upgrade.

27", 16GB, Ivy iMac is in my future if they would release the damn thing. I'll add an SSD myself.