I think the reason why we're stuck with the current Mac Pro is because Apple learned the wrong lesson from the Power Mac G4 cube. It was beautiful but few people bought it because you could get the more powerful and expandable Power Mac G4 for less money.
This time around, Apple didn't build the the tower nearly everyone in this market would have bought instead of the trash can.
Very true. The Mac Pro is eternally reminiscent of a trash can, and it feels hazardous leaving it out in the open, because maybe someone might actually mistake it for one and drop an empty coffee cup in it.
The lack of expandability makes it feel like a doomed purchase, and costing more than $2,000 means spending on something that might prove obsolete in a year (or possibly less) feels extremely frivolous.
Extensible hardware allows us to rationalize a big purchase with the mindset that there's an intent to future-proof with an investment that allocates room for growth.
That concept does not exist with the Mac Pro form factor at all. The purchase is not even slightly user-servicable. Only a subscription to a service/maintenance agreement (read: applecare) provides nigh-full-replacement insurance. And basically, you're just paying for the privilege to gamble. You'll never get to change your old toy into a new toy.
I mean really the only component you're ever going to be able to upgrade is RAM right? Are you suggesting it should be possible to swap out CPUs in iMacs?
But you can already upgrade your hard drives through the USB interface. Nowadays that's plenty fast enough even for external SSDs. You don't really need SATA any more.
That is actually my biggest gripe with the current model Mac Pro ("trash can"). If I'm using a desktop computer, I want everything to be enclosed in a single unit as much as possible. I have and still use the previous model of Mac Pro ("cheese grater"), and I have six internal hard drives, maxed out RAM, and several PCI cards. None of that is possible with any current model Mac except maybe the RAM.
I don't own a MacPro for that reason. I ended up building a desktop PC and using it as a hackintosh (though I gave up a couple years ago and now use a 15" rMBP more often).
For disks USB is alright but it's always been kinda flaky compared to SATA or PATA. The only external port I've used for external HDs that's been as stable as internal connections was FireWire, which unfortunately never really took off.
I could definitely see why professionals or otherwise demanding users might prefer internal disks over external ones.
true. of course, a lot of the external SSDs on the market are bound by SATA interface like speeds anyway (even if they have fast external ports). so they won't be as fast as the internal flash memory in, say, a new iMac. the comparison is roughly: 500 MB/s vs 1700 MB/s
an alternative to the garden variety external SSD would be an external PCI-E card housing (e.g. sonnet or akitio) connected through a Thunderbolt cable. now that's a lot faster.
but, for that we buy an external housing in addition to the actual storage that goes into the housing. so this is more expensive than computers which let us install a PCI-E storage card directly inside the case. which Macs don't let us do easily or at all.
Except when anything slightly unexpected happens (sleep etc), your external drive is not cleanly unmounted and you risk heavy data loss, whereas internal drives are always handled properly.
A relative gifted me an old PowerMac 8600/200, which originally came with a pre-G3 PowerPC 604e CPU, but had been upgraded to a G4 by swapping out the ZIF CPU card. It definitely gave a circa 1997 machine (original OS was either MacOS 7.6 or 8.0) a new lease on life and the ability to run OSX 10.2 Jaguar, (albeit slowly and after a serious RAM and HDD upgrade).
Yes indeed - the Umax S900. I used to have one, with dual 200MHz PowerPC 604e processors, hooked up to a 256GB SCSI RAID array. That felt pretty bad-ass back in 1997/1998.
I actually upgraded my mid 2010 iMac to a 512GB solid state disk. Made soooooo much of a difference. Literally went from almost unuseable to back to my daily workhorse. I can't remember how much time from power-on to login screen was with the original drive, but ballpark a handful of minutes. Now with the new SSD it takes less than 10 seconds.
