Apple quietly ditches AMD

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Results45 said:

Audio engineers, composers, & music mastering with workflows that revolve around the Mac OS ecosystem (and yes -- for the expandability):

You don't actually need a Mac Pro for that though, iMacs and iMac Pros work exceedingly well for it, more often see iMacs than iMac Pros for that purpose. Generally I see iMac Pros being used more for video editing.

 

2 hours ago, Results45 said:

If one must have a easily serviceable Mac desktop, but don't want to be electrocuted, risk breaking the glass display, or pay Apple to service it for them:

I've opened up 90 iMacs to replace the HDD and install a thermal sensor bypass/fix (for Windows bootcamp), only dropped 1 LCD panel lol. Didn't break 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

It is why there was a huge pent up demand for the Mac Pro

While that is true there was, the problem is there still is and the Mac Pro didn't address the demand because of it's high cost. Video editors and audio recorders mostly want storage expansion options and the ability to easily upgrade ram and CPU, PCIe slots isn't actually a big desire unless Apple starts putting out things like 25Gb NICs or ultra fast AIB PCIe SSDs.

 

2 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

I know some programs use CUDA acceleration. You could point those out and exclude those rather than making a general remark which isn't true

No it is a true statement, all programs that I mentioned for the industry areas rely on and use Nvidia and CUDA either exclusively or features require Nvidia to use them. Nobody wants Radeon GPUs in professional usage and it's been that way for a long time, with Apple that is the only choice right now.

 

2 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

You keep talking about you being the customer but then never really proceed onto justifying that. Even I can make up claims. Anyone can.

Yes I did, I specifically mentioned we are existing customers of Mac Pros and have over 1000 Macs on our network. Did you not read that or is what you say about where I work make you more correct than me, the one who works here?

 

Like we recently just purchased 12 servers for our network render farm for the School of Creative Arts and Design, basically all the papers offered there use Macs for all of it or some of it but that render farm is actually Windows. The Mac Pro doesn't even address that either because they aren't properly rackmount and even when done waste too much space, only have a single power supply and have no good QSFP+ options for datacenter switching.

 

2 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

What? Can the iMac Pro have enough memory to handle super heavy computation? Or the thermal headroom. What? iMac Pro has it's place. Mac Pro has it's place. True that the lowest end config is a joke, but that's not what the Mac Pro should be about.

Yes, it supports 256GB ram and 18 core CPU and thermally it is fine, unless you are using it in the Australian outback where there is no aircon or even a building for shade. Apple could you know, just not offer the lowest end configuration but again that doesn't not make the issue go away. If you are buying 30+ of them having to unnecessarily spend $1k plus per unit because the chassis looks nice is highly stupid and actually means the total number of systems could have been more just with that extra wasted money. That's not how finance and procurement work, they have zero interest in aesthetics it's entirely business case justifications and you don't get to buy something just because you want it or like it, that's not how RFIs and RFPs work.

 

2 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

AI/ML is mostly done on Unix based systems like Linux or MacOS. Not windows.

Visual effects, video editing, audio, photo, art are mostly done on Mac. CAD too can be done on Mac.

Wrong, MacOS is barely used for AI/ML because all the currently used frameworks that people actually use require CUDA so MacOS is not an option. Same goes for the other ones, you can do it on MacOS but it's not commonly done on MacOS because either the Radeon GPUs are much slower or doesn't support application features that require CUDA.

 

AI/ML is also done on Windows not just Linux, we have researchers doing that and some of their software they use only works on Windows for what ever stupid reason.

 

Mac is always the exception not the common for everything other than video editing, photo editing and music recording, however for music recording that depends on what you are doing. For the greater majority of these people the iMac Pro isn't just adequate it's more than enough. School of Engineering has zero Macs and has zero interest in getting Macs.

 

But yes you are correct, you can pull a trailer with a Lamborghini.

 

If your world view of professional use cases and workstation market is just creative arts then your world view is very small, if that is all you are thinking about or care about then you will think MacOS is more popular than it actually is.

[Results45]

49 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Also, the research itself is more important than adding support.

 

Agreed.

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/11/arm-intel-powerpc-universal/

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

While that is true there was,

I'm not sure it is true, apple mac sales have dropped by 21% yoy and 8% for the first quarter, so if there is such a huge demand for mac pro it is being absolutely pounded into the ground by a much larger drop in all other mac sales.

 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/04/11/mac-shipments-down-21-year-on-year-in-global-pc-market-shrink

[Spotty]

Thread cleaned. Stay on topic.

[Chiyawa]

On 7/10/2020 at 8:05 AM, Jumballi said:

3. AMD might be under a contract that prevents them from working with apple at this time.

I think this is definitely the case, where AMD joined venture with Samsung (Apple biggest rival in mobile phones platform) to produce a mobile GPU.

 

Anyway, it is strange why they don't choose nVidia as nVidia has good mobile GPU. Probably they want everything to be built in-house. Oh well, I didn't use Apple product before, felt it was way too overpriced.

[mr moose]

26 minutes ago, WI-FIultrasnoop said:

Because I half don't want to read through this entire thread; what was the reason apple ditched AMD?

They haven't yet, the roadmap insinuates apple will be making their own GPU solutions when they transition to ARM.

[vortextech77]

On 7/10/2020 at 10:19 AM, emosun said:

all I know is this is just another nail in the coffin for the forever long battle of not being able to play games on a mac

Like as if they couldn't run without the fans going at full speed anyway lul