Matthew JC. Powell is scratching his head about tubular computers.
If you were to go and find a professional Mac user — a real power-jockey, in the video or high-end graphics or scientific fields — and you were to ask them what they wanted in a professional Mac, how likely do you think it is they'd say "a tube"? Ask a bunch of them — I'm interested to know.
Years ago Apple made a serious tilt at the professional and scientific markets with the Xserve workstations, which were eminently expandable and fit into industry-standard rack mounts. Then it dropped the Xserve but made the Mac Pro really really expandable and kinda stackable (albeit awkwardly), so that was OK. Today's Mac Pro preview showed a machine with zero internal expansion which cannot possibly be stacked. That's what you call a turnaround.
Inside the tube there's three main boards arranged like a triangular prism around a central heat sink. The only reason I can think of for making the surrounds round instead of triangular is that people might be tempted to stack them. Apple is clearly determined on this point.
One pedantic point I feel the need to make: Apple's preview website claims that the central void acting as a heat sink is unique — "No computer has been built this way before". I can think of one, actually: the Power Mac G4 Cube had four boards arranged around a central void that acted as the heat sink. Of course, that one was square and this one's a triangular prism in a cylinder. Totally different. Because geometry.
As for expansion, yes there's lots of it. Four USB 3 ports and six — count 'em, six — Thunderbolt 2 ports (driven by three separate Thunderbolt 2 controllers) ought to handle anything you want to hang off the Mac Pro. Oh, you want to swap out one of the internal drives for a bigger one? You want to upgrade the graphics card (because today's industry-leading dual-whizz-bang workstation graphics are next year's recycling)? You want to add a third-party PCIe card without also having to buy a Thunderbolt chassis for it? Of course you can't! What sort of pro user are you?
Far be it from me to suggest that the upcoming Mac Pro will be anything other than a roaring success. Certainly, I'd be willing to bet there are folks at HP and Lenovo looking carefully and wondering if Apple knows something they don't.
After all, no-one ever thought potato chips fit in a tube either, but it worked for Pringles.
If you were to go and find a professional Mac user — a real power-jockey, in the video or high-end graphics or scientific fields — and you were to ask them what they wanted in a professional Mac, how likely do you think it is they'd say "a tube"? Ask a bunch of them — I'm interested to know.
Years ago Apple made a serious tilt at the professional and scientific markets with the Xserve workstations, which were eminently expandable and fit into industry-standard rack mounts. Then it dropped the Xserve but made the Mac Pro really really expandable and kinda stackable (albeit awkwardly), so that was OK. Today's Mac Pro preview showed a machine with zero internal expansion which cannot possibly be stacked. That's what you call a turnaround.
Inside the tube there's three main boards arranged like a triangular prism around a central heat sink. The only reason I can think of for making the surrounds round instead of triangular is that people might be tempted to stack them. Apple is clearly determined on this point.
One pedantic point I feel the need to make: Apple's preview website claims that the central void acting as a heat sink is unique — "No computer has been built this way before". I can think of one, actually: the Power Mac G4 Cube had four boards arranged around a central void that acted as the heat sink. Of course, that one was square and this one's a triangular prism in a cylinder. Totally different. Because geometry.
As for expansion, yes there's lots of it. Four USB 3 ports and six — count 'em, six — Thunderbolt 2 ports (driven by three separate Thunderbolt 2 controllers) ought to handle anything you want to hang off the Mac Pro. Oh, you want to swap out one of the internal drives for a bigger one? You want to upgrade the graphics card (because today's industry-leading dual-whizz-bang workstation graphics are next year's recycling)? You want to add a third-party PCIe card without also having to buy a Thunderbolt chassis for it? Of course you can't! What sort of pro user are you?
Far be it from me to suggest that the upcoming Mac Pro will be anything other than a roaring success. Certainly, I'd be willing to bet there are folks at HP and Lenovo looking carefully and wondering if Apple knows something they don't.
After all, no-one ever thought potato chips fit in a tube either, but it worked for Pringles.