[seanp2k2]

Just reverse them (so the GPUs are venting up) then have right-angle dongles (which are very Apple now) under a magic magnetic lid compartment. Or, recess them enough (increase the case height) enough that you can plug in normal DP / HDMI cables.

I like it, but it's not proprietary enough for Apple to make. They didn't come out with a single upgrade GPU for the Mac Pro dustbin design, so I doubt they care much about selling modularity or upgradability these days. Their message is clear: "upgrade" means new device, which means all the products they sell are disposable appliances.

IMO, they could open up MacOS to work on some variations of hardware and sell it for $300-$500. They would still make the nicest hardware, but since desktops and laptops obviously aren't their main focus anymore, they could still offer power users good tools to build all these amazing mobile apps on without limiting them to their current slim pickings. Hell, even just make XCode cross-platform. Even just let it run on X, and use the Windows Linux subsystem to support it.

[rbanffy]

Using two standard full-length cards is just lazy design (even if he made it a point to use standard components). The GPUs should be on boards like they are on the current MacPro and attached to the monumental heatsink. This add two fans to a design that absolutely doesn't need them. The SATA disks also seem misplaced - it should extend PCI-E storage or, even better, DIMM flash modules: big Xeons have 4 memory channels per socket, enough for letting a couple of those go to storage. Having one single bus for everything makes the machine much neater.

[intoverflow2]

> The GPUs should be on boards like they are on the current MacPro and attached to the monumental heatsink

This is the exact problem with the trashcan, it's a computer made for GPU computation (one of the trashcans GPUs isn't even hooked up to the display it's purely for computation) yet you are stuck with proprietary versions of GPUs that run the wrong sort of code.

Almost the entire GPU computing community works on CUDA, the trashcan cards don't run CUDA and because they're proprietary they can't be upgraded.

The right solutions are either this design or one where there is a heatsink+liquid cooling bracket system where you can attach a GPU after taking the stock cooler off to. Which is also very common thing to do for people in GPU computing. The latter invalidates your warranty so this design actually makes sense.

[galacticpony]

Just like the designers of the current Mac Pro, you don't get it.

This design (even though it doesn't work in reality) is about creating something that is functionally like the earlier Mac Pros. That means commodity off-the-shelf hardware can be used, not just specialized or outlandish components that are going to be very expensive, if anybody bothered to produce them at all. The current Mac Pro still ships with the outdated GPUs it originally was introduced with, with no upgrade path foreseeable.

[runamok]

And all of the performance improvements are in the GPU space. A 2 or 3 year old CPU is not that big a deal but a 2 or 3 year old GPU? I believe it's an order of magnitude slower (or more).

Here is an example of GPU improvements vs. CPU (although this is an older article) http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/...