Apple's new black trashcan

[skysurfer]

Apple released a new Power Mac for $3000 which is round and looks like a trashcan.
Nice design !
http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

[Octane]

I think I read somewhere the other day which listed it as the 16th most powerful computer in the world (or something). I could be wrong. I wasn't paying too much attention at the time.

What a beautiful machine.

H

[Astro_Bot]

Definitely or something. :)

First, there's the top 500 supercomputers in the world. Then, there's the rest of the world's supercomputers. Then, there's the non-supercomputer high-powered clusters and multi-CPU/multi-core machines for data centres, minor research, design, simulation, etc. Then there's a plethora of other bespoke machines optimised for processing power.

Then, a long way down the list, would be this thing.

And you could still have most, if not all, of that power, for (probably) half the cost if you built your own PC. (You only get quad-core for US$3000).

[Astro_Bot]

While on the subject of supercomputers, did you know that 95% of the world's top 500 supercomputers run Linux? Just thought I'd mention it. :D

[AndrewJ]

Is that cos they arent smart enough to run windoze?:rofl:

Andrew

[Astro_Bot]

How did you manage to type that? Because, clearly, you must have had both hands on it to get excited about windoze. :lol:

[Logieberra]

Beautiful. Reminds me of a dark-side R2D2 :)

[AndrewJ]

Not excited at all.
It would need to be smart, not fast, to run windoze :-)
( esp after the latest service packs sent my CPU up to 100%
cos windoze isnt smart enough to update itself anymore:question: )

Andrew

[Bart]

And here we go again with the Windows bashing. Give it a rest. If you don't like it, that's your problem, doesn't mean you have to go around brow beating everyone , you're worse than a bunch of Mormons.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Bart



If you are referring to my post, then NO, no rest for them.
I bought and use windows and if they do something stupid
they should get called on it.
The latest set of updates basically killed my operating system
and a supercomputer wouldnt have helped.
It took 2 days to really find out what was going on
and its aparrently well known and has happened before.
To have to manually disable system updates,
then manually download and update Internet Explorer
with a specific update before i can get my CPU back
is simply not acceptable.

Andrew

[Octane]

AB,

Yeah, I must have misread something. Ignore the post.

P.S. I'm a UNIX sysadmin.

[bobson]

Makes me wonder how some people who are obviously so much in love with other OS's but Windows always criticize Windows. The topic is about "Apple's new black trashcan"

But it immediately turned into arguments about Windows vs rest.
I read topic a few times and couldn't find anything about Windows in it?

Is this caused by bad weather or something else :) ?

cheers

bob

[RB]

Yes we've already had a report on this thread from someone.
Please keep on topic everyone, we are keeping an eye on this.

:)

[Peter.M]

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/processors/1293553/amd-fx-8120/specifications

I have been running this chip for over a year, the whole setup cost me less than a thousand dollars. It has 8 cores.

[Astro_Bot]

It's a thread effectively advertising a non-astro commercial product (and an overpriced one at that). Fair game for a little cheekiness, I would think! ;)

[Nikolas]

That's $3000 US dollars, the base model in oz is $3999

[alistairsam]

I'm not a big fan of the mac or their pricing but love their design concepts. The unified thermal core and the single fan with attention to blade design is very impressive.
I wonder if it uses jagged rear blade ends based on owl wings that make them super quiet. Lot of aerospace research being done on these lines for making quieter aircraft.
Didnt realize that pci-e flash storage is 10 times faster than a 7k sata drive. This reminds me of their fanless cube computer. Pretty impressive.

Alistair

[OICURMT]

Sony did a round PC years ago...

http://technabob.com/blog/2007/01/07/sony-vaio-tp1-the-round-pc/

[tlgerdes]

R2D2 humped a Dalek and this was the outcome :rofl:

[stevous67]

I'm a PC user, respect the Apple products, and find this design very interesting.

Steve

PS. Not enough to relearn a new way, or to kill myself further in figuring what compatibility issues may exist. It is very clever though.

[Steffen]

People have tried to spec up similar PCs but couldn't match Apple's price, e.g.:

http://techgage.com/article/apples-newest-mac-pro-costs-less-than-diy-pc-build-thanks-to-amd/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/windows-based-high-end-mac-pro-equivilent-costs-even-9599/

Cheers
Steffen.

[baileys2611]

Is there a difference in Apple's architecture for this vs. what would be an x86 equivalent?

Sure, one can buy the chip and design something one's self, but isn't the idea that Apple have a different chip instruction set and better compatibility between components? My knowledge is old on this (circa 1997).

I've heard that Macs excel at image processing, because of the RISC instruction set used for their OS and hardware vs. the alternative for x86 architecture - but that could be me being swayed by popular myth and old concepts of the 90's...

[OICURMT]

These articles mis-represent the facts (although they explain why later)... self-builds costings are based on online retail pricing whereas manufacturers get wholesale bulk discounts, clearly articulated in the first article toward the bottom.

So, the PC version would easily be cheaper if the likes of Dell built and sold their version based on the Dell business model versus the Apple business model (they are significantly different marketing models btw...), with the AMD discount being the primary reason for the "cheaper" cost of the Apple.


OIC!

[2stroke]

Yer living is the 90's there like many other sheep still today. RISC was powermac's g4 ect CISC is any intel x86. Today in supercomputers, RISC is still used alot but really cheaper power is coming from GPU's like the nvidia Telsa, a good example of gpu parallel processing used by home user a bit coin mining. RISC has alot of advantages over CISC though there are disadvantages, like floating point would enovole many instructions on a RICS and only 1 cycle on a CISC.

The truth or the fact is apple was going broke in the early 90's and if Jobs never went with arm and made the first iphone and ipad apple and arm would be dead today. I believe apple went with x86 because it had no choice, how can apple design and build a cpu and compete with Intel in a power race? They simply can't, Hell intel own there own fab plants and lead the way in the nm race, it like a apple's a lemonade stand vs wallmart.

Anyhow i like the new trash can but it lacks the upgrade path of the former Powermacs.