Innovation is not something I really want in the workstation market.

I want something utterly reliable that works flawlessly for several years and if something goes wrong I can swap the bits out in minutes. If I need more disks, just throw them inside it without playing around with half knackered frayed cables, external enclosures, power management and cable routing, volume management etc. More RAM? chuck it in. More CPU, chuck another CPU in.

Apple aren't offering ANY of that.

To be honest, neither Alienware or Razer are even workstation class machines either.

People have a low expectation of the term "workstation" these days.

Citation:

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/workstations/z820_...

Edit: will the "downvoters" please bother to stop and explain what their idea of a workstation is?

The whole "prosumer" thing has been blurring the lines, typically to the detriment of the "pro" market, except for those "pro" markets that do not overlap with the consumer space whatsoever, e.g. heavy construction equipment.

I think Apple's philosophy here is to push all the expansion to external devices. The new Mac Pro has 6 thunderbolt 2 ports on it. I'd assume you could probably connect some extremely large and fast storage enclosures with that kind of bandwidth. A regular workstation will always be limited by the space available inside of it. Not with this.

Ours are locked into desks so they don't get nicked due to the high value nature of the work that is done on them.

Try locking a new Mac Pro, 20 dangling Thunderbolt devices and an iSCSI array into a desk.

You're going to end up with this as well:

http://i.imgur.com/4dmz6Q3.jpg

I also bet someone already is drawing a cylindrical case that holds a few 3GB drives and connects to that Mac using Thunderbolt. Make the cable short and rigid and you get something inspired by the Petronas towers.

And if I had or planned to buy those 20 Thunderbolt devices, I think I would drill a hole in a desk, pull a Thunderbolt cable through, and hang the devices and the cabling under the desk surface

Alternatively, one could build a Cray-1 inspired enclosure by adding a small pedestal with 10 Thunderbolt devices in a circle around it; unfortunately, this machine does not have a thunderbolt connector at the bottom.

And now that I am throwing analogies around: this thing needs a handle on top: http://curta.org.

That 'no connector at the bottom' is a bad thing, by the way. I can't find any picture on apple.com showing this thing with power and display cables plugged in.

Finally, I hope they have tested this thing well for dust intake and overheating in the case people place objects close to it on their desk.

We do use fibre, but only in production deployments.

The secondary issue is "open holes". People like plugging stuff into their workstations. We can fix that with desk cages as well. There is a hole big enough to get your finger at the power button.

I also don't see how the machine you linked to supports "chuck another CPU in". It looks like it limits you to two, which is the same as the Mac Pro.

You can change the CPUs officially with the HP. I doubt Apple will offer that option.

My current "workstation" is configured with 2x 4 core Xeons, 32Gb of RAM, 2x Samsung 840's, a 5 drive SAS array, a 32Gb PCIe RAMdisk and 2 Quadro cards. That won't fit in the new Mac Pro...

If you could stick an engine from a MAN Support Vehicle[1] in a Toyota Prius, it doesn't make it a MAN Support Vehicle...

[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/billkatygemma/6281032897/

Edit: in context the cowardly parent poster suggested that because it has a Xeon E5 in it, it isn't consumer junk.

Am I the only one whose breath was taken away by this new design? Power desktop seriously revisited for the first time since the 80's, anyone?

I kid, I kid.

Honestly though I do not care for an integrated "pro" machine. This is form over function. Fail a component and its off to the shop. Combined with, if I want to upgrade them I need to replace the unit.

If they are going to integrate everything then they need to drop the price. Integration implies lower costs as having all the support needed to drive user added cards and internal drives can be done away with.

Plus its not like I want to have an octopus of cables on my desk and moving storage to all external does that.

Benefits, perhaps driving the thunderbolt prices down and having new and interesting devices to connect to the system.

In the end integration means commodity, just expensive. Can't wait to see what they want for it, I figure on three thousand minimum, which would be a third too much for something so inflexible. Apple, meet Dyson

Exactly why I'm not taking it seriously. What does form do for a power desktop? Nothing. I put my desktop under my desk. I can't see it. I have to stoop to reach the power button.

I'm not going to say there's absolutely no use for form in any desktop, but IMO it's practically the number one least important feature of a power desktop/workhorse.

Certainly one can find flaws, but compared to a typical Windows machine Apple has more craftsmanship (in my opinion). Windows exhibits more of the "just get it done" utilitarian idea.

If someone needs a high stool for a high workbench, giving them an Aeron task chair is, while beautiful and well-made, missing the brief.

I'm could be jaded from working on Windows apps too long. (I worked on Windows stuff from the 3.1 era through to Windows 2000.)

I can't believe no one has recognized the classic Lucas handiwork. The helmet descending on the tangled mass of circuits. The signature triangular mouth piece is so clearly evident in the heat exchanger. I can just hear it cooling ...

Amazing retro-future design cues aside, it might be user-serviceable for all components - will wait for the teardown. It's gorgeous enough to be on the desktop and may be quieter because of the chimney. And it's finally a really powerful Mac.

If you need something more powerful than this, it seems maybe a server is more appropriate.

Oh, so it's exactly like the laptop, tablet, and phone you have now. Gotcha.

I buy AppleCare and leave the screwdrivers to the Genius Bar. They have copies of them on all of the continents I travel between; I frequently do not.

Furthermore, who wants to be in the laptop repair business? I push bits. For a few hundred bucks they'll fix anything that breaks and I can stop being the Maytag Man and get on with life.

(Should I mention that it took two standard-size Phillips heads to replace my screen, the kind of sizes frequently found in a basic swappable-head screwdriver?)

It's 10" high, which is unexpectedly compact. It seems like the designers have chosen a shape to maximize use of space. I'm sure it isn't the only way to go but it's a wonderful next step.

Again Apple has shown us what we want when we thought we just wanted "more".

But at what cost? Everyone likes to bash big box PCs but the fact is that every single component of one can be swapped out for another. Something tells me that won't be the case for the Mac Pro, and when all it's going to do is sit under my desk, I can afford to have it be a little less compact.

There's the overall computing market, which overwhelmingly favors laptops. A subset of this market desires powerful desktop computers. An even smaller subset desires a self-serviceable desktop computer.

For everyone else, particularly people who who use these machines to make a living and are not overly technical (and have no real reason to be), a Mac Pro with a good support contract attached is far more valuable than one they can open and tinker with.

I think this particular point is overblown. Everywhere I look developers have overwhelmingly switched to MacBooks to little ill effect - machines that are far less expandable and less maintainable than these Mac Pros. It turns out that, if you use these machines to make money, it makes a lot more sense to let Apple take care of problems than to roll up your shirt.

Doubly so if you can't tell the front of a DIMM from the back.

Developers will continue buying MacBook Pros in droves. The Mac Pro is overwhelmingly a media machine.

That custom PC swappable component issue mattered when the only game in town for hermetically sealed boxes was USB (or Firewire).

And even then, this chassis looks like it'd be quite easy to upgrade the internals[0].

[0] http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2013/06/newmacpro.jpg

Unless you're supposed to have this on your desk to show it off. I suppose that wouldn't be unusual...

Both of my recent hardware failures have been caused by dust accumulating in heatsinks, so having something which contributes to that is also a "very bad idea". Especially since the air passes through a relatively confined space which you can't regularly clear out.

A common approach is to have an intake filter that catches dust. Another is to elevate the case a few inches above the ground.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

The new "paradigm" this is pushing is that you don't need PCIe cards or internal storage. We'll see about that.

About a dozen times each month.

I understand that an internal unit might have been more convenient for you, but Apple tends to optimize for the more common needs.

The external third unit is pretty noisy, has a large wall wart, and takes up desk space which contributes two cables, power and USB, as well as taking up one of the small number of USB ports on the Mac. This is an exceptionally poor design compared to the experience of using a PC which reasonable comes with an optical drive, something that I use very frequently, as do most computer users.

It looks to me like they've tried hard to make sure that the included GPUs are adequate for 90% of their users, at least for today. As for tomorrow their philosophy has always preferred replacing the machine rather than upgrading it piece by piece.

There's a ton of innovation in that space by companies like Digital Storm: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/%5Bprimary-term%5D/digital_...

Or Falcon Northwest: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/%5Bprimary-term%5D/falcon_n...

A major benefit of these systems is extensibility and repair options, which is why the layout isn't welded together with vendor lock-in proprietary components. Regardless... The ultimate in performance, price and flexibility is still to build it yourself.

Personally, I'd prefer to build a workstation with better specs for a third the price. I'm sure lots of people are terrified to open a computer, and will gladly pay premium prices for something that will look chic for the first nine months.

Let's talk about the real paradigm shift here: Black.

The shape! I really wish they could have gone with a cube or a sphere...not a cylinder! But I understand why those options are not optimal thermally while the sphere is not optimal spatially.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAgnJDJN4VA

By and large this holds true, however an increasing number of manufacturers are offering pre-built slim form factor PCs. They may not be radical re-designs of the sort Apple is trying to push, but they're certainly a departure from the norm [1].

[1] http://www.falcon-nw.com/desktops/tiki

The cylinder doesn't inform a way of using it, it invites multiple. I picture myself using it "sideways," half turned for easy access/cable management.

Rack mounting will require innovation as well, but imagine how densely you could pack them and how dynamic you could make the cooling.

A single fan in a workstation machine. Unbelievable.

I have two large silent fans: one in the power supply and one over the cpu in my monolithic 2007 PC.

How about a load of mini-itx boards suspended in cooking fat?

I agree in that most workstation units have are visually lack lustre. I was asking someone the other day why they don't wrap X model of iPhone in alumunium or titananium, and he said that it costs too much. But surely they are so small that it wouldn't hurt to add some luxury materials - a can of pop comes with a free alu can.

The design actually reminds me perhaps of a precursor to the R1 astromech droids (on the inside.)

https://www.google.com/search?q=rack+mount+mac+pro

Halfway down this page and it really appears a lot of people are just inventing reasons to have a problem with it.

It is a pretty cool idea, and takes advantage of some of the properties of aerodynamics. I wonder if they tested this in a wind tunnel.

Besides, while the new design has some interesting features (well... one plus a different look), it's not like you could have built an 'all-in-one' with your dad 20 years ago. Stop with the hyperbole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zx81

(Or rather he built it and I played the games.)

Gaming PCs and consumer level desktops may be "plastic pieces of shit," but the workstations I've used are always solid - both hardware and software.

The ones I have used have the build quality of a rack server, but in a desktop system. They typically use Xeon processors, ECC memory, etc.

How about Thermaltake? http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001...