Moving to a new Mac Pro

I am retiring my old G4 workhorse. I don't plan to use Migration Assistant because: 1) I have read in these forums that there are issues/problems going from a PowerPC to an Intel machine, 2) I have picked up a lot of stuff over the years (2003 - 2009) and want to start fresh, 3) I want to keep the same account names, 4) the only folders/files that I want to transfer are Documents, Calendars, Keychains and Mail. Being an old DotMac user I have a copy of Backup (but it hasn't been updated for a while so don't know if it is compatible with 10.5.7). So, has anyone out there had any experience with using Backup.app to backup/restore form an old machine to a new one? Or, how about starting the old machine in Target Mode, and just dragging the folders/files I want over to my new accounts?

Much to my chagrin, after doing some research on Target Mode, I found out that only the master drives are mounted. And in my case only one of the master drives! Go figure, because I have four (4) drives in the G4. I posted this problem over in the hardware section and someone wrote back and said why don't I just use AFP (sharing in OSX). I don't know, maybe that would be easier.

Similar Messages

  • Moving XP drive to a new Mac Pro

    I have an install of XP via Boot Camp on an old Mac Pro. It exists on it's own hard drive installed in the machine.
    I'd like to move it to a new Mac Pro.
    Is it as simple as moving the drive to the new machine?
    When I run boot camp on the new machine will it recognize the previous install? Or will I need to do a new install?
    Thanks
    Dj

    It 'should' work, but XP will see it is on different hardware and require activation or something. And, you always need to boot from XP CD once when moving it to do some system repair from what I heard.
    If you want to address 4-8GB RAM; use both cpus, have better multi-core support, I wouldn't even use XP.
    So depends on if this is retail or system builder whether you can deactivate and move the license.

  • What is the best way to set up my new Mac Pro?

    Not wanting to screw up in a process I've not done with a brand new machine before, I'm looking for feedback on my plan for setting my new Mac Pro next week...
    The physical plan is this:
    For RAM, I have four 2GB SDRAM's plus the supplied six 1GB modules. My plan here is to install the 2GB rams into the first four slots and install four of the 1GB modules into the remaining four slots for a total of 12GB's.
    When the cost for 4GB modules gets down to reasonable, I'll buy four of them and bump the current rams down the line which will then give me a total of 24 gigs where I'll stay.
    For my hard drives, I'm installing a 160GB Intel X25-M into the first drive bay
    http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/index.htm
    using one of MaxUpgrades' 'MaxConnects' kits. I will use this drive for the operating system software and my applications and their libraries.
    Next, into the remaining three drive bays, I am installing three 300GB WD Velociraptors. Mine are the pre-'backplane ready' versions:
    http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=459
    so I have bought these sleds for them...
    http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_i d=180
    I own one of Sonnet's Tempo SATA E4P cards
    http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposatae4p.html
    which, thanks to this forum, I now understand, with the correct firmware installed, function well so I will install it and be able to establish hardware RAID. I will create a RAID 0 set with the three Velociraptors and use it to store all of my data files.
    Backup will happen on a 1TB WD 'Caviar Black' external drive connected through one of the Sonnet card's external eSATA ports and using the OS 'Time Machine' software.
    And that's the physical plan. My question is about setting things up. The physical installation part is straight forward and I don't expect any difficulties but I'm wondering what is the best way to install the operating system.
    Do I take a first step keeping the supplied hard drive installed, install the solid state drive into the next drive bay and then transfer the contents from the supplied drive onto the SSD or do I do the complete physical installation process and do a 'C' drive start up and install the OS that way?
    And, do you have any tips/suggestions on setting up the RAID 0 set?
    thanks for the help. I want to do this right.
    JQ

    oh mighty Hatter, I knew you'd have helpful guidance to offer! And thank you. You've confirmed my anxieties about the Sonnet card; kind of a 'too much, too quickly' sort of thing. And it's not that Sonnet's not a good company. Just everything to do with new technologies and the growth curve we all, manufacturers and users, go through when they come out. And, for sure, the new Mac Pro's are new technology; the single biggest forward leap in Apple's top-of-the-line machines for some time far as I can tell. Just reading at Intel's website about the Nehalem's is a joy!
    So, I will proceed now with everything except for the controller card, leaving that 'til later. In the meantime, I think I'll just happily run with the four hard drives all running independently. No software RAID. I know just those, the SSD boot drive plus Velociraptor trio's going inside of a 2.66ghz 8-core Nehalem Mac Pro is going to be a working pleasure. Heck, this way, I'll get settled in and used to the machine's speed, have a great time doing so and then, in however many months, I can jump into spending another chunk of money on an excellent RAID card, RAID card's dear Barefeats will have tested and reviewed for us, set up my RAID 0 set and head of to those new races watching my computer leap for joy! Could be that, by then, the cost of Intel 160GB X25-M's will have dropped enough that I can afford to go for a second and have a two SSD RAID 0 boot drive... Yummy!
    Thanks for the help. Like I say, I knew there was useful guidance hanging on some limb within your personal kit, (otherwise referred to as your mind)!
    Interesting to read about the problems people have had with Sonnet's 2.17 update in PPC's... In this computer, my PowerMac G5 dual 2.7ghz, I have a Sonnet 'Tempo Sata X4P' controller card. I downloaded and installed 2.17 and got the same troubles; no cut, no paste, no 'drag and drop' etc. It was miserable.
    Mine, fortunately, magically corrected after running the 'permissions verify and correct' process in Disc Utility and, after a restart, all was back to almost normal but for one exception; the Sonnet card was no longer present or functioning including the four eSATA ports out the back. (I ran Tech Tools Pro 5's repair suites first but, and who knows why, it didn't correct the problem...) This one was absolutely in the 'who knows what the f_'s going on and why it disappeared but did' class.
    Oh, the other remnant is that, when the computer goes into sleep, after about five minutes, the fans rev up, and up, and the computer's frozen; only access is to do a forced shutdown pressing and holding the power button, so I've had to adopt a 'shut down whenever leaving it for more than fifteen minutes' approach to this dear friend. Once I've fully moved into and established my new one (which should arrive today, by the way... Yippeee!!! Can't wait!), I'll do a complete restoration on this one including taking out the Sonnet card. Usually, I sell my old Pro's but, this time, I'm going to keep this one as a back up and just general second computer for times I might need it. It has been such a great and dependable machine. Keeping it seems the right thing to do.
    thanks Hatter. I'll let you know how things go, including what happens with the SSD. I don't have speed test software so I won't be able to track it's performance like that guy in the post you gave me did...
    JQ
    ps- Gotta love that ILLogic fellow eh? Talk about not getting the essence!

  • After Migration to new Mac Pro, intermittent slow downs, SROD's

    I started with a my intel mac mini, Leopard OS was installed on an external Firewire drive, most applications were installed on another partition of that same drive. I bought a new mac pro 8 core, and an additional firewire external drive that I set up as my Time Machine drive on my old mac mini. I did a full backup of my old mac mini system and then attached the time machine drive and the other external hard drive to my new mac pro. I used the migration assistant to transfer files to my new mac pro. However, now there appears to be something occuring between my internal mac pro hard drive and the old external hard drive from my mac mini. When using some applications, Itunes, Logic Pro, Firefox, the ap will hang and appears to be trying to access files from the old external drive. I hope I'm being clear with what the issue is. I'm thinking duplicate files on this external drive and my internal drive are causing some problems? I need to know how to repair the issue, and preserve my data files?

    bb240z wrote:
    Thanks for your quick response. I know I've been somewhat confusing here. I'm running the latest Snow Leopard update on my mac pro now.
    Then please update your profile, as it still shows the mini and Leopard.
    And I'll ask a Host to move this to the Snow Leopard > Time Machine forum.
    All the aps and data were migrated onto the internal HD in the mac pro, and the aps and files and directory structures, etc. are still also on the external drive that used to comprise the OS of my mac mini. I'm thinking that may be part of the issue, but I'm new to Mac and not certain of that or how to fix the issues.
    Depending on how you did that, I'm not sure everything on those partitions got on to the new Mac's HD. Check that first, via the Finder.
    Let's start with iTunes and/or iPhoto.
    First see if you have the same stuff in both places. Use the Finder to see how large each is on the external HD, and compare that to the iTunes and iPhoto folders on your internal HD.
    If they're not on your internal HD at all, use these instructions to move them:
    Moving your iTunes Music folder
    Moving your iPhoto library
    If the versions on the external are newer than the ones on your internal, delete the ones on the internal and use those instructions to move from the external to the internal.
    But don't delete the versions on the external just yet. Eject and disconnect it, and make sure everything's fine. It won't hurt to leave the data there for a while, especially as long as it's disconnected.
    If the music or photos on your HD are the same, or newer, hold down the Option key while starting iTunes or iPhoto. That will give you a prompt where you can select which one you want to use.
    Once you've selected the ones you want, eject and disconnect the external. Then use as many apps as you can, to see if everything works properly and all your data is found.
    Without knowing what other apps you have, and how they work, I can't tell in advance whether any others will be looking for the external drive. If you get error messages, you'll have to deal with each app that seems lost.
    I'd be inclined to keep the old external "on the shelf" for quite a while, just to be sure nothing got missed.
    Have you started doing Time Machine backups of the new Mac yet? When you do, you'll get a prompt about whether to "re-use" the Mini's backups. See #B5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum. You probably want to select "Re-use," especially if there's a considerable amount of space on your TM drive.

  • Installing SSD in new mac pro

    hello,
    looking into purchasing an ssd for soon arriving mac pro.
    already purchased a 16g memory and a 2T HHD upgrade.
    i came across the speed tests for ssd on start up and the ssd's seems pretty impressive. (OWC site)
    I'm going to be using the new mac pro primarily for processing landscape photograpy.
    PS5, LR5, autopan pro and the nik software are the programs that i wil be running most ot the time.
    files sizes sometimes reach 1+g.
    Question.
    If i install a new SSD, probably a 120G Mercury Electra from OWC in one of my bays what should be on it? Just OS?
    I have a 1T HHD that came with the MPro and I have another 2T HHD that I purchased for photo storage.
    Not quite sure how the two different types of HD's will work together from a speed standpoint
    Very new to this so any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.
    Thank you.
    Owen

    Some folks buy themselves an SSD thinking they are going to get a great a performance boost. But the boost they get by only adding an SSD is that Applications launch faster, and not much else.
    If you want a bigger boost, and a boost across the board, move the user files off, leaving only System, Applications, Library, and the hidden unix files behind on the Boot Drive. Mac OS X is hugely over-configured on main memory. It is incessantly going back to the Boot Drive for a little of this, a little of that, and it moves the drive heads away from the data files you want to be reading and writing. Once you are not moving the heads away from your data to pick up system stuff all the time, your data drive will get faster.
    The big payback is using a Boot drive. An incremental improvement is using an especially fast spinning drive like a VelociRaptor 10K for your Boot Drive. An additional incremental improvement is using an SSD for your Boot drive.
    If you just add an SSD, but do not segregate the System, etc on its own drive, you pay top dollar for launching Applications faster. A big disappointment.
    japamac's Blog: Make Space for performance -- Moving the home folder

  • How to copy apps to new Mac Pro?

    Is there an easy way to copy the applications from my G4 to my new Mac Pro? It would be nice if at least some of them can be moved over along with the user licenses.

    If they are Universal Binary and can be just dragged to /Applications you are probably fine, but if they use an installer, then only migrate your home account folder and install fresh. Good to collect and keep all your software downloads and updates in one place.
    PPC and Intel are different operating systems and support libraries, at least with Tiger, and can cause anything from sluggish weird performance to downright nasty.
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0

  • New Mac Pro seems to have problems - what type of re install?

    I have a relatively New Mac Pro (2x 2.8 ghz 8 core with 4GB ram). I upgraded from a G5 and ran the migration assistant as normal. I use a lot of programs and use it daily on a professional basis. Mostly used programs are Mail, Safari, Photoshop, Bridge, Indesign, iview media Pro, Rapidweaver, to name but a few.
    I have noticed some issues, such a computer running slow, taking its time to do very simple operations. I also have Adobe software misbehaving and crashing, especially Bridge and Photoshop that often comes up saying "could not complete request because of a program error"
    I thought that I would completely wipe the drive and start again, but this a lengthly process - especially when it comes to preferences, settings, mailboxes, etc etc.
    The question is should I archive and install, or reinstall or indeed try anything else first?
    Thanks in Advance..... Mark

    There are some simple troubleshooting you can take.
    Create a new User go to System Preferences >> Accounts >> "+" (make it an admin acct) and test the apps in this new account, if they work the problem is isolated to your User and not systemwide.
    If the issue is limited to your user account try starting up Safe Mode (It will take more time to startup in Safe Mode because it runs a directory check.)
    If your apps functions correctly that way, go to System Preferences >> Accounts >> Login Items, and remove them. Boot normally and test. If not go to ~(yourHome)/Library/Contextual Menu Items and move whatever is there to the desktop. Then do the same with /Library/Contextual Menu Items. Lastly, try moving ~(yourHome)/Library/Fonts to your desktop and restarting.
    Log out/in or restart, if that sorts it start putting items back one at a time until you find the culprit.
    If the issue is systemwide then, you may be able to repair this with the 10.5.6 Combo Update This is a fuller install, as opposed to an incremental "delta" update so it should overwrite any files that are damaged or missing. It does not matter if you have applied it before.
    Remember to Verify Disk before update and repair permissions after update from /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.
    -mj

  • Problems moving mailboxes to new Mac

    I decided not to use the Migration assistant when I got my new Mac Pro - I installed all the software from scratch to make a nice clean installation. However, to move all of my mail across I simply copied the Mail and Mail Downloads folders from Library. I have the user folder and the hard drive named the same on my new Mac as on my old one.
    It certainly looked like it had worked fine. But a few days on, I was trying to search for an old email which contained a font I needed, and discovered that the email was completely blank - and all others in the same mailbox were also completely blank. Oddly, the attachment was actually present in the Mail Downloads folder - but I'm concerned that the emails aren't actually there.
    Fortunately the content is all still present on my old computer - so what is the best way to move all of my mail to my new Mac? Please note that I have about 4 inboxes for different email accounts, and some of my mail gets automatically moved to various mailboxes in the 'on my mac' section.

    I copied the Mail and Mail Downloads folders again, and this time I also copied com.apple.mail.plist and com.apple.mail.searchhistory.plist. It now seems to be all there, I cannot spot anything missing. Are there any more files (preferences etc) that I should have copied?

  • After Effects and the new Mac Pro

    I recently got one of the new Mac Pros and it doesn't get along great with After Effects, particularly when it comes to ray-tracing.  There is no Nvidia GPU option for the new machines, so ray-tracing defaults to CPU.  But then, even with a simple solid, it gives you an out of memory error.  I've seen postings saying this is fixed in 12.2 but I've got 12.2 and the newest CUDA driver installed and run the machine with all other apps closed, but no luck.  Presumably I'll figure out how to get it running after a fashion eventually, but even then, even with the new machines' many fast cores etc, CPU ray-tracing on the new Mac Pro is not looking promising on the speed/usability front.
    Element 3D is an option, but its reflections can't interact with the comp the E3D object is within, only with the environment map in the plug-in itself, so there are many cases where it's a poor substitute.
    My question isn't really how to get ray-tracing to work with the new machines.  That would be great, but my sense is the answer there is, it effectively can't. 
    My question is, given that motion graphics increasingly involve the complex interplay of light, reflection, transparency, and three dimensional objects, and that from here on out Mac Pros will no longer accommodate nvidia cards, and that many creative types will only work on Macs, how long will this state of affairs continue?  How long can it continue?  Are there any plans to make After Effects fully functional on the new Mac Pros?  Ray-tracing has always been balky and wonky and prone to error messages and crashes, but despite all that it's also an indispensible part of After Effects. 

    A fun update, long after the fact:
    So I've learned Cinema 4D in order to reacquire the capability After Effects once offered internally and have succeeded after a fashion.  Let's look at the relative ease of the new method versus the old one using a real-world scene from my project:  Adding a bus shelter over actors on a bench.
    In ray-trace enabled After Effects of old, I could draw simple draw shapes in Illustrator, extrude them into objects, collect them under a null and position it in my scene.  Particularly powerfully, I could bend 2D photograph layers into half-domes for a fun roof, and create planes of transparent glass of any thickness I chose with refraction levels that made for interesting visuals as actors moved behind it, and add reflectivity to any layer I chose -- including the dome roof, for instance, which would then pick up the reflections of any other objects in my scene.  I could also put 2D layers in front of my bus shelter as easily as placing a layer closer to the camera than the makeshift model.  Well, sometimes it didn't work as advertised; sometimes you also had to have the foreground layer above the background one in your comp even when both were 3D and that wasn't supposed to still apply, but at least it was After-Effectsy.  The whole thing was After-Effectsy, which of course is good because presumably AE users know AE, but also it was similarly logical.
    To achieve a similar end with C4D and Cineware, all you have to do is this:  Build your bus shelter model in Cinema 4D.  Wait, first learn Cinema 4D, a hugely complicated piece of software.  Come back in 3 months, I'll wait.  Hi again.  I see you've built your bus shelter.  In fairness, you were able to add textures and complicated curves you couldn't in After Effects.  But then you always could, if you were willing to learn a hugely complicated piece of software.  Anyway, let's get that model into after effects.  Just drag that C4D project into your AE project and put it in the comp.  Put other layers in front of it or behind it.  Easy!  Now just a few caveats.  1.  Scale.  There is no formula available anywhere for the relative scales of your two projects.  So tweak that.  Just go back and forth between the two software suites -- I hope your computer can have both up and running at the same time! -- until you get that right.  2.  Cameras.  You can import your AE camera into C4D and vice-versa as easy as pressing a button in Cineware.  It shows up somewhere strange in C4D unless you use a workaround unless you are also camera tracking in AE in which case you can't.  3.  Scale again:  Your camera will match its moves in both suites now.  But they are drastically different sizes.  If you import your C4D camera into AE it becomes tiny tiny tiny, if the scale of commercial C4D models is to be considered at all standard.  Just shrink your model down to say 1% and you should be good to go.  And if you tweak your camera in AE or C4D, you have to junk your imported camera and re-do that step.  4.  Reflectivity.  Your C4D model will only reflect items in your C4D project, not the, um, scene it's going in.  5.  Refraction.  Transparent C4D items will indeed show your AE items behind them.  But you can't add refraction.  6.  I've saved the best for last.  Say you want your actors in your bus shelter, meaning part of the model is in front of them and part behind them.  You used to place them (shot on a greenscreen or roto'd) in the bus shelter model.  Now you simply do this:  Divide your bus shelter model into halves, the in-front half and the behind half.  Put both under nulls.  Give the front null a C4D "tag" called compositing.  At least its name makes sense.  Then go into the tag and enable a numerical "object buffer."  You're almost done!  Next simply go into "render options" in C4D and into "multi-pass" there and then enable object buffers again there, so intuitive!  Make sure to enable the same numerical object buffer you enabled in your compositing tag. Good?  Good!  Now, all you have to do is place two copies of your C4D project heirarchically in your AE project.  You're still almost done!  Now all you have to do is go into "multi-pass" in your Cineware plug in in the instance of it that goes in front of the actors and specify your numerical object buffer again.  Wait, one tiny thing:  If your Cineware plug-in is still set on the default "Standard" setting that option will be grayed-out.  Just switch it to the much slower-rendering C4D opions and you're good to go!  And don't worry about two copies of your C4D project in your AE one meaning it will now take twice as long to render, because it will.  But, as a bonus, you've probably learned a lot of ways to render C4D models really well when learning C4D because Adobe made you.  So you can use those to make your AE comp really shine... or wait, could, but they're not supported.  You can however render it in that flat ugly video early Pixar style, but life is full of trade offs, no?  You end up rendering out the layer you need in C4D and comping it into AE exactly as effects artists have done ever since always.  Which is to say AE gave up even trying to do 3D and sent you into the waiting arms of a more-capable competitor, their seeming specialty in the world of video.  Maybe it's better this way.  AE was only ever for comping.  It briefly got a swole head.  Now it's back in its comfort zone.  The end

  • New Mac Pro (Late 2013) and Motion

    Although Final Cut Pro is optimized for the new Mac Pro (Late 2013), the current Motion 5.1 apparently is not.  Even when turning the render settings down, the playback of a complex motion sequence within Motion was extremely choppy.  When exporting to a ProRes file, only four to six of the available 12 threads ony my 6-core system were being only partially utilized.   I have 64 GB RAM and dual D700s with nothing else running, so system resources are plentiful.  Any suggestions out there?  Hopefully there will be an update to bring it up to speed.

    The sequence I am rendering in Motion is definately complicated, with about 100 differencet images on a moving wall with reflections and multiple other effects.  This definitely pushes the system alot but I was able to use the same sequence on a very old Mac Pro (2006) and a i7 Hackintosh with an Apple 5870 card overclocked to 4 GHz without this severe stuttering on playback within Motion.  There is no shortage of memory on the new Mac Pro with 64 GB RAM and D700s with 6 GB VRAM, running all files on the main internal SSD.  Very strange.

  • What is the best storage solution for the new Mac Pro

    Hi All,
    With limited funds when purchasing the new Mac Pro, I'm starting to look at storage for music/pictures/video etc - I'm thinking of storing this data externally and connecting via Thunderbolt or Firewire or USB3 to access the data... Not sure what type of storage to use, upgrading to 1TB PCIe-based flash seems excessive for costs and I would like at least 2TB, anyone have any suggestions?
    What are the alternatives for storage... (single disk Raid) I've recently had to replace my internal WD hard drive (lost everything) and the backup time capsule failed, again knackered disk (looks like WD format error with Maverick OS bug), don't want to format them just incase..
    With the new Mac Pro coming with 256GB PCIe-based flash storage, I'm reluctant to upgrade the storage because of costs and would like some redudancy when it comes to storage.
    Any suggestions?
    Many thanks
    Russ

    landing page at OWC for Thunderbolt products.
    Helios enclosure (the new dual-slot Helios PCIe chassis) and moving various hard drives into Thunderbolt cases (in time) but mainly into my favorite USB3 hard drive enclosure.
    For those without eSATA enclosures, a simple eSATA to USB3 adapter might do the trick.
    USB3 is plenty fast to house two hard drives.
    If you can, I'd try to order with 500GB to get started and have more room for system and default for scratch or even for Aperture/iPhoto or Lightroom.
    Always take the precaution and zero a drive before use. Want a solid enterprise ideal for RAID, then look no further than Seagate Constellation series. 128MB cache doesn't hurt and fine for RAID5, NAS or whatever you want.
    There should be retail PCIe-SSD products in 2014.
    Large storage, http://macperformanceguide.com/topic-thunderbolt.html

  • What are your opinion on the new mac pro

    I feel while radical its too limiting thereby loosing fuctionality. But I also knw how the iSheeps would follow their iSheperd blindly. There making this kind of thunderbolt for everything the norm. I also know that the PC companies brought this on themselves they failed to innovate followed intel and nvidia to blindly with there xeons and quadro. The 3 major pc makers market professional workstations that you would probaly sell ur kidney to get one we have the z820 while very powerful its just 2 xpensive. Let's take for example the imac is the best bang for d buck most beautiful all in one if hp had used say a normal 3770k and a gtx 680m 4gb dat would have brought the price of the z1 down drastically. Let's say d average joe wants to be an editor, compositor, colorist. if u goole pc workstations hp z820 and dell T7600 would pop up but they are dam so xpensive hp consumer PCs are garbage. If there is onething apple knows the average pro does not want to be bothered with specs. I think the pc industry brought this on themselves. Wat of the smaller custom builder they focused so much on gaming big megatron design like cases with all the talk of FPS is every thing. My only prayer is that asus, msi gigabyte should stand up aganist apple and start releasing sexier designs, unless I fear even adobe is not safe cos most editors would gradually drfit back to FCPX sad wen inferior products triumphs a superior one. Pls drop ur thoughts also ur opnions as editors in your location the general trend. I hate to be locked in a garden where I am told this is what I need. I love choices.

    The 2 biggest problems with the new Mac Pro are the complete reliance on Thunderbolt for expansion and the Proprietary GPU modules. What happens when those Fire Pro cards are EOL and new GPU's are available. Will Apple go to any of the GPU manufacturers and get newer modules manufactured. Considering the applications that are moving to GPU processing, that was really a very bad idea simply because of the Minimum order quantity Apple will have to make to run another module. Apple will not be able to pull from the general video card supply which means they will be solely responsible for any production numbers required to manufacture to begin with. I personally expect this to be a major limitation as time goes on.
    The complete reliance on Thunderbolt for expansion really was bad idea and not ready for prime time. TB2 has the total bandwidth of a PCI-E Gen 2 5x. That is the entire pipe available to pump any video output data, high performance storage, I/O devices, and any number of devices available as time goes on especially video cards. Those trying to GPU process through that pipe are going to find that latency is way to much a problem to get that done. If Lightpeak was out and had the bandwidth of PCi-E Gen 2 or Gen 3 16X then I would say great. There is just to small a pipe and to much device moderation at the TB controller to do this now. The major problem that will develop from this later is when Lightpeak is out for the PC and devices start moving there. Where will Apple be with the Mac Pro when it's entire expansion is legacy in 1 to 2 years. As a final note Thunderbolt 2 is just Thunderbolt 1 with 1 bidirectional channel in stead of 2 unidirectional. This is not a major improvement over the original.
    The final consideration though not a major problem yet is the limit to 6 Core Xeons. This is likely due to the heat the 8 Core Xeons generate combined with a centralized cooling design. One of the major reasons to get a Dual Xeon is the 8 Core CPU options. Without that then there really is far less reason to get a Dual Xeon over a single 6 core and eventually 8 core workstation. This is a sacrifice that will reveal more later than now.
    Considering the Mac Pro is meant to be the flagship platform for Apple's Pro market, there are really way to many limitations on this one to compete with the PC equivalents. There is only so much OSX will add to any system.
    Eric
    ADK

  • Opinions requested: new Mac Pro versus Mac Pro 4,1?

    I've been toodling along for eight years now with a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1. It continues to serve me well because I do not require blazing speed. The hairiest program I use is Eclipse, which is quite fast enough for my needs. Otherwise, I'm just doing browsing, email, word processing, and a limited amount of image processing -- nothing requiring much speed. Over the years, I have added to the machine; it now has 8 GB of RAM, an SSD, and two monitors.
    But Apple has moved on past the limitations of my Mac Pro. I'm stuck at OS 10.7.5; my Mac can't handle the newer OS's. I've been willing to live with this for several years, but I know that the walls are closing in on me. Slowly, steadily, the software I use is being made obsolete by the continuing evolution of the platform. I know that I'll have to replace my Mac this year.
    But I balk at the $3000 price tag for the new Mac Pro. Sheesh, I don't get much benefit in reducing my compile times from 0.5 seconds to 0.1 second. The only thing I really need is to be able to handle is Mavericks. (Well, it would be nice to get BlueTooth build in -- that stupid BlueTooth dongle I used drops the connection about once a day).
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    The Growling Gotcha with this option is the fact that these machines are already five years old and Apple is certain to render them obsolete at some point. But how long will that be? How many years of service can I expect from such a machine before I am forced to abandon it?
    It's all guesswork, of course. Which is why I post my question here. I'd like to tap the collective wisdom of this community. Please opinionate.

    Have you considered building a PC?
    Gag me with a spoon? I've been using and programming on Macs since May of 1984. Every time I've had to work with Windows, I puke. My wife occasionally asks my help with her Windows machine at work, and I always find the experience highly distasteful.
    But, to each his own.

  • New mac pro can't set-up

    just received my new mac pro and can't get it to work. on set-up after a few seconds i get a message need to restart and this goes on and on. what can be the problem. please help.paid big bucks.
    Thanks, mtools

    I can't really answer without any more information, but I guess it could be possible the OS wasn't properly installed. If you're near an Apple store, I would take it in to them and let them troubleshoot it. If not, I would pop the DVD drive open with a paperclip: There should be a small hole in the front of the actual drive. Not sure if you can get to it by moving the door down (the little door that opens for the DVD drive) to access it or if you'll have to remove the side of the computer and get to the hole that way. OR: You should be able to open the DVD drive while it's attempting to startup by holding down the mouse button. When you get the DVD drive open, slip in the Tiger or Leopard disk and hold down the "C" key to startup from the DVD. Then you might be able to re-install the OS.
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    Just a couple things to try, anyway... Maybe someone else will have better ideas.

  • Which new Mac Pro for Logic?

    Well, they're out and on the AppleStore and I have about £2800 burning a hole in my pocket...
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    Technology is moving so fast that you have to just use your gear in the moment and hope for the best.
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