Gadgetory

yo guys johnathan here this is an exclusive in-depth look at the 2019 Mac Pro so last week at WWDC I got a chance to spend some extended time not only with the pro Display xtr which already covered but also the Mac Pro so I want to take all of that all of the bits and pieces of information we learned since then and compile that into as in-depth of videos that possibly could essentially until the Mac Pro arrives which looks like it might be as early as September in a lot of ways the new Mac Pro is very similar to the older model Mac Pro Tower but at the same time it is completely different it starts with a stainless steel frame that also doubles as handles if you wanted to move around in a studio environment that is impaired with this crazy aluminum housing that's removable and gives you 360-degree access to everything inside as far as what you can pack inside this Mac Pro it gets a little ridiculous up to 28 cores 1.5 terabytes of RAM not storage ram up to four GPUs and more importantly it's not only expandable it's modular when Apple releases this Mac Pro the trashcan Mac Pro back in 2013 it was by far the most powerful Mac you could pick up it was small it was compact it was radically different than any other Mac out there but it was anything but modular and that left a lot of pros feeling left out in the dark it's like great now what I'm gonna do with this thing we're limited to Thunderbolt expansions and now they've given the pros pros will really appreciate what they've done people who look at the Mac Pro and say it's you know it's silly or it's too expensive don't understand what it means to a pro user where time is money and for people who are working at the highest levels we're rendering or bouncing or offline bouncing or audio workflows where time is money to us that that machine will pay for itself inside of six months easy that was Andrew Dawson one of the most talented but also one of the most down-to-earth coolest humble dudes I've got a chance to work with he's an audio engineer that's worked with everyone from Kanye to childish gambino to fun to Destiny's Child where my soldiers at and there remember during the keynote when they announced a MacPro immediately wanted to hear his take on it because really someone like him is who this Mac Pro is geared for that right there kind of brings us to the notion of need versus one because in reality most of us don't need a Mac Pro and I'm including myself in that mix this is for Pro Tools sessions recording entire orchestras with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tracks forty work in Maya or what you're looking at right here is the actual virtual movie set in Toy Story 4 going back to the lack of modularity with that 2013 Mac Pro yeah you could upgrade the RAM the storage to an extent the CPU but that was about it there was no pci expansion you were limited to thunderbolt enter the 2019 Mac Pro where yes PCIe expansion is back there's more of it than ever but where I feel the game-changer is what Apple is calling the MPX module which so many people are getting wrong they have PCIe slots but they're like double-wide PCIe slots with one part of it being like a normal PCIe slot and then another part being like the power slash Thunderbolt connector slot basically apples way of saying oh you want to put in your own graphics card you better buy it from us or else it's not gonna work whatever reason they think Apple is just making this dumb proprietary box to trap people into the system and completely missing or ignoring the fact that one there are PCIe expansion slots and to Apple is giving you power on the machine to add your own graphics card if you wanted to there are just way more advantages with the MPX module so the MPX module takes your standard PCIe connector and then as a second one that does two things one it gives you a ton of power and actually one single MPX module delivers as much power as the previous generation Mac Pro by itself and to that had stunner bolt and data which is not something you would get with your traditional graphics card for starters you can sandwich two Radeon Pro Vega twos into a single module you have a direct connection for faster data transfer and it also doubles as a cooling solution for the GPU so you're not gonna have to rely on 13 fans to keep this cool now inside the Mac Pro there is room for two full-size MPX modules so if you wanted to you could max this out with a total of four GPUs which is bananas well people are also missing is that it's not just limited to graphics this thing which is a rating closure from promise it's heavy it's as big as my head maybe bigger but they've already announced an NP X module that packs 32 terabytes of raid that just slots into the Mac Pro that's amazing seriously not only is that big its bulky it's a second source of power whereas that's not something you have to worry about with the Mac Pro and that's why it's so special now I've seen some comments on the base configuration with the Mac Pro specifically that are x58 and you really got to sit back and realize that this machine isn't just for video editors and in fact in an audio world that actually makes perfect sense one they're not going to need that kind of graphics power because audio applications are more CPU and RAM intensive and two that's gonna leave you more space for PCI expansion which is huge in the Pro Tools world they use these small DSP accelerator cards that pop into the PCI Express slot in mind you one of these will cost you nearly $4,000 so that gives you an idea of what you're dealing with in the pro world but essentially like afterburner but for audio so the more cards you can slot in the more tracks the more voices the more complex your session can be and going back to the original modular Mac Pro Tower cuz mind you this wasn't an option with the 2013 Mac Pro the Mac she could throw in there it was three so with this Mac Pro and those graphics in the smaller form factor that's what allows you to get up to six of them in this machine which is huge what they had to do before was think a bunch of machines together to run the sessions and the track counts they need with the DSP accelerator cards that were you know the average HDX cards now they can run it all on one machine they can run the music you know session they can run the dialogue session the sound effects the ADR they can run it all on one machine which just takes the complexity out of you know syncing together sample accurate machines and and it's it's kind of a giant colossal pain to get everything to work right where you can have it in one box and and get everything to rock under one hut two Logic Pro 10 as well with higher sample rates more plugins more virtual instruments more tracks and that's what you're paying for with the Mac Pro the ability to cater it to exactly what you do now breaking down the CPU options with this Mac Pro because it does get a little bit crazy you have options of eight twelve sixteen twenty-four any ridiculous twenty-eight cores and for that guy who's about to say you don't need 28 cores you don't need 28 cores but this guy definitely does what's happening here is a 6kh dr maya project if you look towards the bottom of the screen you can see those cores being put to work and that is a beautiful thing now I would say the 12 and 16 core options are probably gonna be the sweet spot in terms of best bang for your buck one you're getting faster memory and two you're getting more cores more threads more cache but also keeping the base clock speed really high now I've seen some discussion of the base Mac Pro being slower than the iMac Pro and there's some truth with the iMac Pro having better graphics but the CPU comparison is a little bit weird with the Mac Pro you're getting newer architecture a higher base clock more cache and more importantly a much better cooling solution you're not gonna get this kind of heatsink in an iMac Pro if anything I think that speaks volumes to how capable a machine behind Mac Pro is and I remember thinking to myself when the iMac Pro came out if this was it if Apple never released a Mac Pro I would be fine because that was more than enough power at the Mac Pro event they had this crazy camera robot for motorized precision which you've probably seen at mkbhd videos and attached to that was an unreleased canon a.k camera you are welcome canon rumors that was capturing 8k pro res video that was in sent into motion where they keyed out the background and then applied these complex 3d titles and elements it was playing back in real time and the end result looked like something that was entirely rendered but it wasn't in the crazier part is that was all done on an iMac Pro that right there I think is a giant reminder that if you're upset with the entry price of the Mac Pro you probably shouldn't buy one and also realize that hey there are actually a ton of capable options right in front of you back when they released the 2013 Mac Pro or especially back with the modular MacPro tower you didn't have the options that you have alongside that today there was no iMac Pro there were no 5k IMAX with a core CPUs you didn't have a 21 inch iMac with 6 core processors and bigger graphics it was a completely different time going back to that 2013 Mac Pro people were upset that it wasn't pro enough and this time it's almost like people are pissed off that they delivered a machine that was too Pro again this is a machine for high level workflows and what you're looking at right now is a beautiful HDR time-lapse video that actually started from over 700 raw 6k photos the workflow with this starts in Lightroom where you import you do your correction your color it is then sent over to LR time-lapse which takes every single one of those photos and apply a uniform exposure across everything which is super complex if you've ever worked in a program like this or even Lightroom and try to export that many high-res lossless photos that takes a ton of time as far as the performance you could expect with this Mac Pro Apple is claiming is supposed to be twice as fast as the previous generation and that goes back to what Andrew said for pros time is money now what's happening here is there are three streams of a que pro res video stacked on top of each other in a single timeline its HDR there's effects there's color correction and that's happening in real time playing back in full quality like you've got to throw that into 1/64 quality just to play that back in premiere jokes aside it's a really impressive setup but it also gives us a look at the afterburner card which is optimized for pro res and pro res Raw the idea with this is that it's taking the workload off the CPU off the GPU which frees those up for other tasks but what's awesome is that it's relatively compact it's not taken away from any of those MPX modules so if you wanted to you could stack this with 4 GPUs and that afterburner card on top now if you're furiously typing into your keyboard that there are more video programs than just Final Cut Pro 10 I got you here's a look at resolved 16 which is coming out soon paired with the new Mac Pro what's happening here is you have that same 8k footage with color correction as you look closely you got 4 nodes going on and everything is playing back in full quality now while we're in the video editing world because the storage on this Mac Pro is tied to a t2 chip you're also getting the same HEV C encoding like you would on an iMac pro just - hey Siri now the biggest advantage with that t2 chip is going to be hardware level encryption on your storage which might not seem like a big deal to a lot of you out there but when you're dealing with movie assets NDA's unreleased songs things that you don't want people having access to that is a huge deal yes I would have loved to have seen a higher capacity option in terms of storage with the baseline Mac Pro 256 gigabytes is a little on the weaker end but you can max this out up to four terabytes and I think a lot of people will take advantage of 10 gig e and also you have that option to expand internally with something like that promise MPX module saving the best for last because without a doubt the biggest baddest most enticing innovative feature on this new Mac Pro forget an MPX module is the ability to rock these wheels can your PC do that I am kidding please don't answer that this though has been your first look at the 2019 Mac Pro I'm excited and if you've made it this far virtual high five and definitely check out my video on the pro Display X dealer because much like the Mac Pro I think that's also underrated you