Throwing in the towel on the Mac Pro

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I’ve never bought an Apple refurb. They don’t discount them enough to make them tempting.

[Les Wilson]

Yeah, the refurb was from Apple and saved $750. I wish it had worked out. I like the architecture. But it's too old and pricey to not be flawless.

I know about the Mac Pro's 3 Thunderbolt busses and how you were supposed to separate disks and display if possible.

How does it work with the 4 Thunderbolt ports on the 2018 MBP? How many independent TB3 channels are there? Does it matter if everything is behind my TB2 dock? I would think it would. TIA

[William Hohauser]

Returning it was probably the best thing to do. Getting them to replace a bad video board would have been a task if my experience is any indicator. Basically they have to replace both (that’s Apple’s stated policy towards video board repairs) and you have to make sure the one MacPro repair facility in the country does it. They didn’t do that with me and the Apple staff apologized profusely over the mistake.

I have purchased a number of Apple refurbished units over the years and had a good experience with all of them. I still have a refurbished 2007 iMac running well. These days I cycle my new computers so I haven’t purchased a refurbished in a while but I do recommend them. They might not be as cheap as a full used Mac but they usually perform well and for a long time.

[Les Wilson]

UPDATE: I'm 48 hours into reluctantly substituting a MBP 2018 as a replacement "desktop". The MBP keyboard and track pad are absurd but it doesn't matter as a desktop. On a stand next to a new 38" curved 22:1 display, it serves nicely as an FCP video output monitor. VERY Nice. Perfectly sized. Otherwise it sits there black as night.

I anticipate the touch bar to be a pleasant ergonomic addition to my work habits similar to having one single screen instead of two which I find I have long rooted work habits to toss away and create new ones. Better ones.

Performance wise, it's i9 6-core with 32GB memory plus Radeon Pro 560X with 4GB VRAM is snappy as can be. Rendering, it is mildly faster than the Cheesegrater and about the same improvement that the 8-Core Mac Pro 2013 was. I hope they can improve that over time.

Compatibility with monitors is squirrely, I picked up the U3818DW Dell variant of the LG 38" curved panel because it was touted as designed for professional environments over gaming as is the case with other OEM implementations. While true, it suffers compatibility with the MBP 2018.

When connected via the USB-C connector to the TB 3 ports, the MBP nicely gets charged and stays charged (90w). However, the system won't stay shutdown or slept unless I physically power off the monitor. Without this, the monitor is constantly awakening to declare there is no signal and waking up the RAID in the process. It's constant cycling up and down.

To get proper SLEEP/SHUTDOWN behavior, you have to somehow hook up via the Display Port which is adding non-Apple dongles, docks etc... more compatibility pitfalls and a desktop mess. The Dell monitor's USB ports only run at USB 2.0 speeds when connected via USB-C. More cables and docks need to fix that.

I'm only 48 hours into it but I do not like the non-Apple monitor experience.

Anyway, I threw in the towel on the Mac Pro 2009 and reluctantly had to do the same with the Mac Pro 2013. The magnitude of compromises at this point is larger than I ever remember. But I'm hoping this unit will last me long enough to get to the speed bumped version of the next Mac Pro. I never buy version 1.0. Time will tell. YMMV

[Jonathan Levin]

I’m really interested in this as I am thinking of replacing my mid 2010 mac pro with something portable but powerful enough touse fcp x and maybe someday 4k video. For now 1070p. I also have an Apple led display that I bought at the same time as the MP, still looks great but unsure if it will work well with current MBpro, or if I need a third party display like LG or simular. Storage is a whole world I need to figure out

Your experience with shut down/sleep has me concerned.

Thanks.

[Les Wilson]

If you are happy with the display, keep it going. I'd expect it to work fine and you will certainly get support from Apple on it. I had twin Cinema HD displays that were aging quickly with not being as bright and ports failing.

It's a wild wild world with OEM displays. Zero support from the manufacturer. I doubt the display was the main problem with the nMP. I recall having the freeze once or twice with the old display. Didn't think much of it at the time.

I cannot speak to the MBP and 4K. I only work with 1080p XDCAM 35 and rendering is 2x faster then my cheesegrater. Also, the display doesn't clog up as fast when lots of apps are open as my Radeon 5870 with only 1G VRAM. I do mainly 8 minute packages and rendering on the MBP is so much faster it's hardly enough time to make a cup of coffee. :-)

I went down the path of getting a Dock because the monitor compatibility problems go away when it's connected via DP. But before it arrived and while Apple is working on the Sleep/Shutdown problem when connected via USB-C, I found that I can sleep/shutdown and then quickly power off the monitor before it causes trouble. The dock is sitting in the box. I read a post that since it;s a USB-C dock (not Thunderbolt3) it only runs the mini-DP connected 4K monitor at 30Hz. That's a non-starter for me if true. I'll wait for a TB3 dock.

My gut says the MBP is putting something on the wire the DELL U3818DW wasn't expecting and things go down the tubes. Turning power off on the monitor prevents it from responding or whatever and waking up everything. But I'm guessing. The TB2 G-TECH G-Speed Studio RAID handles it fine connected only by a TB2 to TB3 adapter from apple. They are a good buy if you can find them in stock.

I found that TB2 connected RAID was as fast as my internal drives on the cheesegrater. The silent running of SSDs is enticing. When I don't need the RAID, I power it down.

[Les Wilson]

This is what I'm seeing on the MBP with the G-Speed Studio.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Have you run out of towels?

[Les Wilson]

LOL. There is a bit of irony in throwing in the towel on the cheesegrater Mac Pro and then then having to also throw it in on the nMP. Yes. I am out of towels. This MBP is nice. Hope it lasts.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I’m joking but I went through similar problems trying to upgrade my cheese grater. At the end I realized I rather have stable reliable mac even if it’s slower and older.