[Tloewald]

Indeed, Apple's pro macs have generally been ridiculously upgradeable and user-accessible. (Modulo needing to "cover your hands in bandages" before opening up one of the full-sized Mac II series). The 7-series "sidecars", and 8- and 9- series towers, could be completely accessed without tools and had CPUs on upgradeable daughtercards.

[brudgers]

The video cards in the last generation of MacPro's could only be upgraded to the cards offered directly from Apple or the handful Mac-specific parts offered by third parties. With it's unusual form factors, the new MacPro will probably offer even fewer options.

It also looks like the current form factor also limits internal storage to a single drive - i.e. it's a workstation that does not provide for an internal RAID configuration. It also does not provide any way to back data up without using a network connection or external device.

None of these may be deal breakers, of course, but the trend is definitely away from upgradability. Then again, a shared heat sink and limited air volume combined with a 450w power supply and a single fan design probably give Apple business reasons to move in that direction.

[MikusR]

How else you suppose data BACKUP be done if not over network or on a external device. RAID is not backup.

[brudgers]

Two separate points:

The MacPro does not provide the capability for an internal RAID configuration,

The MacPro does not offer the ability to backup to an internal device such as a DVD drive.

[calinet6]

Yes, but it has six external PCIe plugs (in the form of thunderbolt) to which you can hook up whatever you damn well please.

I really don't understand the importance of the distinction between internal and external. It's sitting on your desk for pete's sake, just plug stuff in.

[to3m]

What could possibly be a better backup than a bit-for-bit identical copy of your drive, kept constantly up to date? All you have to do is remember to remove one of your drives and replace it with another one... your backup isn't very safe if it's still in your PC!

[glhaynes]

It's generally a fine backup against single-drive catastrophic hardware failure, but not against any other failure type: i.e. file system corruption, accidental file deletion/overwriting, destructive malware, etc.

[to3m]

Right - and this is why you take one of the drives out every now and again and replace it with another one! Provided you do that, I don't see why it isn't as immune to the listed problems as any other type of irregularly-made backup.

It might well prove quicker to use an ordinary backup program (my 2 x 2TB RAID1 system takes about 10-15 hours to rebuild, while Acronis will back up the 1.2TB of used data in about 5 hours). And there's a bit of inconvenience, in that you have to shut your computer down and swap the drives. But in exchange, the backup is guaranteed to be atomically that of your computer in its shut-down state - at least on Windows, I think this is difficult to guarantee otherwise.

[calinet6]

Seems like a hassle. TimeMachine does an otherwise satisfactory job and is much less manual, which is the important part for 90% of users.

[ceejayoz]

A second, non RAIDed drive works just as well as an external HD for on-premises backups. It won't save you from an office fire, but neither will the external HD.

[strozykowski]

Unless you take that external HD home with you every night and the fire happens to take place in the office overnight.

[rangibaby]

I agree with this post except for this part:

> The video cards in the last generation of MacPro's could only be upgraded to the cards offered directly from Apple or the handful Mac-specific parts offered by third parties. With it's unusual form factors, the new MacPro will probably offer even fewer options.

Since OSX 10.7-ish a lot of cards have "just worked". Before then using a PC card was a bit of a crap shoot, but not impossible, usually OK if the card was the same as the reference design.

If you'd like to know more, check here: http://netkas.org

[leoc]

Here's Jobs touting the accessibility of the 1999 PowerMac G3's internals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=pH-...

[peedy]

Link that starts from a good time, http://youtu.be/pH-6Tek9yF4?t=40m41s