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Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum?

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  Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? User Bp <bp@www.zefox.net> - 2013-12-01 04:07 +0000
    Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2013-11-30 23:20 -0500
      Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) - 2013-12-01 21:06 +1300
        Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2013-12-01 18:42 +0000
          Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2013-12-01 15:05 -0500
          Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Craig Harrison <email@domain.com> - 2013-12-01 20:49 +0000
          Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) - 2013-12-02 12:29 +1300
      Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? "M. John Matlaw" <nouser@invalid.com> - 2013-12-01 15:22 -0500
    Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2013-12-01 04:23 +0000
      Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2013-11-30 23:34 -0500
        Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Michael Vilain <vilain@NOspamcop.net> - 2013-11-30 21:30 -0800
          Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2013-12-01 00:37 -0500
          Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Jim Gibson <jimsgibson@gmail.com> - 2013-12-02 15:56 -0800
            Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2013-12-03 13:19 +1300
            Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2013-12-02 19:35 -0500
      Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Suze <replytome@thenewsgroup.com> - 2013-12-01 18:28 -0500
    Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? nmassello@yahoo.com (Neill Massello) - 2013-12-01 12:17 -0700
    Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2013-12-02 09:11 +1300
      Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2013-12-01 23:04 -0500
        Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2013-12-02 18:11 +1300
        Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2013-12-02 18:27 +0000
        Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? cosme.marley@gmail.com - 2013-12-02 23:25 -0800
          Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2013-12-03 04:39 -0500
            Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2013-12-04 09:05 +1300
            Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? rcp27g@gmail.com - 2013-12-04 05:55 -0800
              Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2013-12-04 18:06 +0000
              Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2013-12-05 09:01 +1300
                Re: Any "sweet spots" in the used Mac spectrum? rcp27g@gmail.com - 2013-12-06 02:27 -0800

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#52918

On 2013-12-02, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> On 13-12-01 15:11, Your Name wrote:
>
>> The sweet spot is a brand new top-end Mac Pro with four 4K displays ...
>> that's defintely "sweet" ;-) , but hideously expensive.
>
> MacPro is not ready for prime time.  Diskless high end workstation may
> be something for the future, but not for today. Apple need to produce a
> second enclosure for disks, optical and other peripherals.

Hardly. My 2009 Mac Pro has been running on a single 480GB SSD for a
long time now without issue, and space is not an issue. I'm betting I'm
not the only Mac Pro owner on the planet with this sentiment.

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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#52934

On Sunday, December 1, 2013 11:04:14 PM UTC-5, JF Mezei wrote:
> On 13-12-01 15:11, Your Name wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > The sweet spot is a brand new top-end Mac Pro with four 4K displays ...
> 
> > that's defintely "sweet" ;-) , but hideously expensive.
> 
> 
> 
> MacPro is not ready for prime time.  Diskless high end workstation may
> 
> be something for the future, but not for today. Apple need to produce a
> 
> second enclosure for disks, optical and other peripherals.

Do you think MacPro is closest to being this diskless high end workstation or do you think it's another vendor? Thanks.

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#52936

On 13-12-03 02:25, cosme.marley@gmail.com wrote:

> Do you think MacPro is closest to being this diskless high end workstation or do you think it's another vendor? Thanks.

While Apple may have a correct prediction that in the future, all will
be SSD for local low volume storage  and use cloud storage for terabytes
of data. In that environment, the new MacPro may be fine, but that
environment isn't even close to arriving.

Just consider your internet connection's uplink speed. Your fancy
MacPro's CPUs won't go to 100% when rendering a movie because it will
constantly be waiting to write your data to the cloud over your slow
internet uplink.

And the NSA revelations may just kill the cloud buzzword. Do you really
want to make it easy for the NSA to know about everything you do, all
your family's pictures etc ?


So, for today's needs, the MacPro's advertised price is only a
propportion of your system cost because you need to buy a separate
cabinet for real disks, for optical media and other peripherals that
Apple has decided will eventually no longer exist.

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#52938

In article <529da6ed$0$61367$c3e8da3$5e5e430d@news.astraweb.com>, JF
Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> On 13-12-03 02:25, cosme.marley@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> > Do you think MacPro is closest to being this diskless high end workstation
> > or do you think it's another vendor? Thanks.
> 
> While Apple may have a correct prediction that in the future, all will
> be SSD for local low volume storage  and use cloud storage for terabytes
> of data. In that environment, the new MacPro may be fine, but that
> environment isn't even close to arriving.
> 
> Just consider your internet connection's uplink speed. Your fancy
> MacPro's CPUs won't go to 100% when rendering a movie because it will
> constantly be waiting to write your data to the cloud over your slow
> internet uplink.
> 
> And the NSA revelations may just kill the cloud buzzword. Do you really
> want to make it easy for the NSA to know about everything you do, all
> your family's pictures etc ?

Many (most?) Mac Pro users are likely to be in environments with
massive amounts of fast local network storage.




> So, for today's needs, the MacPro's advertised price is only a
> propportion of your system cost because you need to buy a separate
> cabinet for real disks, for optical media and other peripherals that
> Apple has decided will eventually no longer exist.

The Mac Pro / PowerMac pricing has always been a bit misleading in that
sense. You've always need to add an external display for example.

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#52942

On Tuesday, 3 December 2013 10:39:56 UTC+1, JF Mezei  wrote:
> On 13-12-03 02:25, cosme.marley@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> > Do you think MacPro is closest to being this diskless high end workstation
> > or do you think it's another vendor? Thanks.
> 
> While Apple may have a correct prediction that in the future, all will
> be SSD for local low volume storage  and use cloud storage for terabytes
> of data. In that environment, the new MacPro may be fine, but that
> environment isn't even close to arriving.

The old general purpose PC that was expected to do every task from computational heavy lifting, to games playing, to bulk data storage to internet communications is long gone.  In the workplace and in the home, people now expect to have multiple computer-type devices that are specialised to specific tasks.  If, at home, I want to browse the web and to play computer games, it is more likely that I will have a separate computer-like device to do each task than it is that I will have one machine to do both.  Where they need shared resources (eg internet access), that is provided over the LAN.

In the world of high power workstations, it's the same.  The task of storing and providing access to (and making backups of) large volumes of data, and the task of conducting computationally intensive calculations are best not handled by some device that is forced into a compromised design to do both tasks moderately well.  Instead, two separate dedicated devices are used, one a dedicated data storage device and the other a dedicated number cruncher, and where they need to interact, they do so over the LAN (and for the majority of purposes, gigabit ethernet *is* fast enough).

The new Mac Pro is a dedicated number-cruncher.  It has recognised that the job of bulk data storage is best left to either high end dedicated solutions for enterprise or commodity NAS boxes for the smaller organisation.  For the remaining small subset of users for whom networked storage on gigabit ethernet is genuinely not fast enough and the SSD inside is not big enough, there exists thunderbolt.

> Just consider your internet connection's uplink speed. Your fancy
> MacPro's CPUs won't go to 100% when rendering a movie because it will
> constantly be waiting to write your data to the cloud over your slow
> internet uplink.
> 
> And the NSA revelations may just kill the cloud buzzword. Do you really
> want to make it easy for the NSA to know about everything you do, all
> your family's pictures etc ?
> 
> So, for today's needs, the MacPro's advertised price is only a
> propportion of your system cost because you need to buy a separate
> cabinet for real disks, for optical media and other peripherals that
> Apple has decided will eventually no longer exist.

Agreed entirely.  I will not be giving up local HDD based storage anytime soon.  What I will do, however, is take it out of the power hungry, thermally challenging PC box, and put them into a low-power dedicated server-container where they can be accessed by any of the numerous computing devices I now have.

Robin

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#52943

In message <c144d2be-07ac-44c3-8521-606bb5bed2eb@googlegroups.com> 
  rcp27g@gmail.com <rcp27g@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, 3 December 2013 10:39:56 UTC+1, JF Mezei  wrote:
>> On 13-12-03 02:25, cosme.marley@gmail.com wrote:
>> 
>> > Do you think MacPro is closest to being this diskless high end workstation
>> > or do you think it's another vendor? Thanks.
>> 
>> While Apple may have a correct prediction that in the future, all will
>> be SSD for local low volume storage  and use cloud storage for terabytes
>> of data. In that environment, the new MacPro may be fine, but that
>> environment isn't even close to arriving.

> The old general purpose PC that was expected to do every task from
> computational heavy lifting, to games playing, to bulk data storage to
> internet communications is long gone.  In the workplace and in the
> home, people now expect to have multiple computer-type devices that
> are specialised to specific tasks.  If, at home, I want to browse the
> web and to play computer games, it is more likely that I will have a
> separate computer-like device to do each task than it is that I will
> have one machine to do both.  Where they need shared resources (eg
> internet access), that is provided over the LAN.

256GB is plenty large enough for most power users, actually. You install
your apps and you have your data files, but those are tiny. Unless you
are doing heavy lifting tasks (video) you don't need more. If you are
doing video, then you will have a multi-terabyte disk subsystem anyway.

The difference between this machine and previous MacPros is that this
one is targeted at professionals, and not at wannabe "prosumers". As a
long-time wannabe prosumer myself, I understand that the machine for me
and others like me is the iMac. I am not in the Mac Pro's demographic.
Not at all.

Doesn't mean I dont want one though...

>> Just consider your internet connection's uplink speed. Your fancy
>> MacPro's CPUs won't go to 100% when rendering a movie because it will
>> constantly be waiting to write your data to the cloud over your slow
>> internet uplink.

What drugs are you taking? No one is going to be rendering video over
the cloud. Even a gigabit connection is too slow for that.

-- 
Would you say you worship Satan, or do you simply respect his
no-nonsense approach to discipline?

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#52944

In article <c144d2be-07ac-44c3-8521-606bb5bed2eb@googlegroups.com>,
<rcp27g@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 3 December 2013 10:39:56 UTC+1, JF Mezei  wrote:
> > On 13-12-03 02:25, cosme.marley@gmail.com wrote:
> > 
> > > Do you think MacPro is closest to being this diskless high end workstation
> > > or do you think it's another vendor? Thanks.
> > 
> > While Apple may have a correct prediction that in the future, all will
> > be SSD for local low volume storage  and use cloud storage for terabytes
> > of data. In that environment, the new MacPro may be fine, but that
> > environment isn't even close to arriving.
> 
> The old general purpose PC that was expected to do every task from
> computational heavy lifting, to games playing, to bulk data storage to
> internet communications is long gone.  In the workplace and in the home,
> people now expect to have multiple computer-type devices that are specialised
> to specific tasks.  If, at home, I want to browse the web and to play
> computer games, it is more likely that I will have a separate computer-like
> device to do each task than it is that I will have one machine to do both. 
> Where they need shared resources (eg internet access), that is provided over
> the LAN.

Only because most people apparently have more money than sense these
days.   :-\

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#53029

On Wednesday, 4 December 2013 21:01:57 UTC+1, Your Name  wrote:
> In article <c144d2be-07ac-44c3-8521-606bb5bed2eb@googlegroups.com>,
> <rcp27g@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > The old general purpose PC that was expected to do every task from
> > computational heavy lifting, to games playing, to bulk data storage to
> > internet communications is long gone.  In the workplace and in the home,
> > people now expect to have multiple computer-type devices that are specialised
> > to specific tasks.  If, at home, I want to browse the web and to play
> > computer games, it is more likely that I will have a separate computer-like
> > device to do each task than it is that I will have one machine to do both. 
> > Where they need shared resources (eg internet access), that is provided over
> > the LAN.
> 
> 
> 
> Only because most people apparently have more money than sense these
> days.   :-\

People don't have any more money than they used to, it's just that the cost of PCs is much less than it used to be and the rate of increase of software demands have slowed down so much that the useful life of a PC is much longer than it used to be.

In 2003, a PC that was bought in 2000 for $1000 would be barely able to run the then current version of MS office, let alone play current release games at all.  Today, a PC bought in 2010 for $1000 can play all the current release games, most likely at high graphics settings, and has no trouble at all with office tasks.

If you consider a budget of, say, $350/year for IT equipment for a family of 4, that would just about keep them up to date with a single PC for the whole family, capable of running office type apps and playing games badly.  Today, that budget would allow you to maintain a good quality gaming PC, a second PC capable of office type tasks and a tablet for every member of the family.

Robin

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