Mac Pro is a failure
Wednesday, 16. January 2008, 00:46:55
Although I got angry, frustrated and disappointed, I will keep it as silent as I can. This post has exactly one purpose, and that is to protest Apple. And a note; if you love your freedom, DO NOT BUY Apple computers.
My Mac Pro (quad core 2.6GHz 3GB memory NVIDIA 7300GT 256MB and 1.6TB storage) didn't even turn its first year, but according to Apple, it's dead already. I cannot upgrade this computer. I do not like showing off with money, but I have paid almost 5000 USD to this computer (excluding software licenses) in February 2007 and waited whole year for an official NVIDIA 8800 GT release. Meanwhile I bought my copy of Mac OS X Leopard at the first day with ~100 Norwegian Krone discount. They have finally released new Mac Pros at the beginning of 2008, with NVIDIA 8800 GT graphics card. They also placed this nice upgrade kit in Apple Store web site. I do not want to go in details, but roughly 2 weeks of confusion, rumors, lies, and all sorts of conspiracy theories pretty much implied that "no, the card won't work on Mac Pros that are sold before 2008". I didn't want to believe and I wanted to wait. Today, actually just few hours ago, they have finally (after 2 weeks of mud and hatret stirred) updated Apple Store and clearly said that this card requires PCIe 2.0 slots.
Why do I complain about a technical difficulty? I am not a hardware expert, but according to PCIe 2.0 standard, people say, PCIe 2.0 supports previous versions, it's backwards compatible. On the other hand, people have been running NVIDIA 8800 GTs made for PCs on these Mac Pros for God's sake! There are people who bought their brand new Mac Pros just 3 months ago, they paid around $4000 and now they can't upgrade! This is outrageous!
I am willing to ditch this vendor locked enslavement equipment at the first chance. Apple's impression dropped to negative. I stopped booting from Mac OS X and I will not boot for a long time. Good ol' Microsoft Windows rules! (See my "Hall of Shame" - collection of screenshots of Leopard crashes? Mac OS X crashed 5 times in its first 12 hours (since when ejecting DVD causes recursive crashes?), my development PC, which is running sinking Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2, is still up and running for 117 days, and I work from home, too. I actively write code, debug, delete stuff, download, write documents, at least 14 hours a day (believe it or not - including Sundays).
Moral of the story? If you ever consider buying a Mac Pro, don't do it; go and buy yourself a decent PC. You know, those "stinking" PCs sold in the "Joe's Computer shop" at the corner. Do not pay to be enslaved by bunch of arrogant people. Install any operating system you like, upgrade any part for at least 2 years...
Simply;
PC = freedom of choice
WIDGETIZE
z@h3k # 16. January 2008, 05:52
Mihai Sucan # 16. January 2008, 09:31
I would recommend you to try Ubuntu Linux. If you are lucky to have no hardware support issues, you'll most probably like this OS. I'm using it for two years already - no reinstalls - and I changed my entire PC in this time period. Vendor lock-in is inexistent - you can do whatever you want with the OS.
Keiv M. # 16. January 2008, 12:45
I have similar concerns with the ipod and its batteries, if it dies in a location where i have no access to an electric outlet i'm screwed. and being forced to buy an ipod to use itunes is wrong. ironically people complain that windows media player 11 doesn't work with ipods and that it should, whereas itunes only works with ipods, quietly enforcing a little monopoly.
All should be opened up to allow real competition, but apple is the belle of the ball and how dare anybody criticise them?
Jakob # 16. January 2008, 15:49
- Free to surf
- Free to listen to music
- Free to view my movies
- Free to blog
- Free to chat
- Free to whatever
Don't know how you got to US$5,000, or why you decided to add the extras.
Buying a Mac, is not an investment. There is nothing you can't do just as good on any other machine. A Mac is only cooler, because we say so and of course because the people who own them are too.
Same goes for iPhone, iPod and what ever else Apple throws at us. You made these things important to you. You stopped thinking, when you bought your MacBook PRO and so did I
Non-Troppo # 16. January 2008, 20:37
Leopard has not crashed on my yet, though I waited until 10.5.1 but it is faster than tiger overall and as stable so far. Though I use XP in a VM, I would never use it again as a main OS (I'm a long-term windows user until a year ago). Tiger and Leopard are just so much better in so many ways for me, and my Macbook is the best Laptop I've owned...
Ice Ardor # 17. January 2008, 06:49
I hope your problem gets solved. Good luck getting Apple to give you any advice. You're probably better off talking to some Dell tech support person in India who can't form an understandable sentence in English.
Ismail # 18. January 2008, 02:16
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=4780578
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=410804&page=30
This is a "Mac Pro", NOT a "Mac*Book* Pro". In other words, it costs twice of the second most expensive Apple computer. Mine costed $5000, last year. There is no more point to express my frustration but it'll be always here with me; I am angry, and I will hate Apple, and I will not recommend, in fact bash Apple at every chance. And I clearly understand that it's difficult to understand my situation; empathy, or shall I say "symmpathy" to this rather dire situation I am in.
We are not talking about a house where you simply can't do somethings as you wish because it might break entire apartment, or some difficult-to-change structure. This is a state of the art technology which normally has limitless (or shall I say "broadly") extensibility/upgradability. If I can't upgrade before 1 year:
a. My equipment is outdated, like may be 4-5 years or even older
b. My auxilary stuff (i.e. software, such as Leopard) does not support it
c. It has engineering flaw that prevents it to be upgraded
Answer: c
If somebody makes a computer in 2007 (that includes December 30th 2007, too), and if this computer cannot be upgraded in 2008 (as in 8th January 2008) due to anything, I blame manufacturer. It's his fault. NVIDIA 8800 and PCIe 2.0 were around on Februrary 2007. If they sold me this old metal pile and knew it cannot be upgraded despite the fact that they show off "how extensible this box is" on their web site, then I blame them, they lied to me. If I cannot plug PCIe 2.0 card in my case, because it actually is a power problem (AFAIK PCIe 2.0 delivers more power to port than PCIe 1.1), that's their problem, too. They should have put some special power cables/ports inside casing, or, they should have made this available in a different form with a little extra fee, Apple technical service could have changed something and there you go! But no! They cut it short; "no support for ya, we're sorry pal".
Much you like you think, non-troppo, but my direction is opposite; I may use Leopard not as a primary OS, but may be in a VM or may be on a device that I don't depend on/care about. I don't want to be enslaved by some arrogant people sitting in California and making decisions about what I can and I can't do with my $5000 computer. And I can't just buy another 8800 GT. This is Mac, not a PC. It needs EFI to get the card usable in Leopard. In fact, I can plug an NVIDIA 8800 made for PCs and it will run when I boot from Windows - win-win, who cares about Leopard, anyway? That's my plan, if I can't sell this metal pile at a reasonable price.
For example, they used this Xeon processors and they require, with this chipset config AFAIK, "pairs" of memory. So if you need 1GB, you need to buy 2 (two) 512MB sticks. I bought 1GB, came home, plugged the stick and oops, I still have 1GB, it didn't become 2GB. Then I read the manual and it states that it needs "pairs" of memory. Isn't it stupid? They are selling 4 server class processors with only 1GB memory? That was the first negative mark I gave to Apple.
jakob; It's NOT a "BOOK". It's a desktop Mac Pro, with 4 Xeon processors 3GB memory and 1.6TB storage. http://www.apple.com/macpro/
I am using 2007 version of this box; not with 8 but with 4 cores, not with NVIDIA 8800GT 512MB with 7300GT 256MB. And all I am asking is this graphics card.
robodesign; I already use FreeBSD and I do not like Linux since year 1999.
ZAHEK; not alin, sonra basiniz agirimasin, sakata gelmeyin. Adamlar cin gibi, acimadan carpiyorlar!
Uptime of my development PC (Windows XP SP2)
Non-Troppo # 20. January 2008, 10:16
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=3642
Note this issue affected both Macs and PCs, and many PC owners who expected backwards compatibility did not get it, causing them to flash their cards back to PCIe 1.0 performance for it to work. This is AFAICT an NVidia problem which is why NVidia are providing a firmware fixed card. Apple has not needed to fix their chassis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_series#8800_GT
Ismail # 20. January 2008, 18:52
Jakob # 21. January 2008, 13:51
Non-Troppo # 21. January 2008, 14:27
Neither did NVidia or ASUS with the PCIe incompatibility issues. Microsoft have remained silent about core Vista bugs for months. And for Linux, you get the great prospect of fixing it yourself. Numerous Opera users are frustrated as they complain in the forums and no-one from Opera responds.
It is not always easy for a us users to feel heard. But the test is that an updated card *has* been released to allow Mac Pro owners access to the latest Graphics tech, you were not abandoned. The area is pretty murky, but NVidia probably told Apple that the PCIe interface of the 8800GT was back/forwards compatible (which it should be by the spec). Apple trusted NVidia. Then ss they tried to upgrade their cards they found it failed in older Mac Pros, and that launched the hardware engineers of Apple and NVidia trying to find a solution. They could have avoided the bad-will of users by joining forums and posting replies, but that doesn't change the fact that this was fixed especially for existing customers. If you were a Dell owner you would have been in the same position, as the problem was the hardware incompatibility of PCIe in the 8800GT...
Ismail # 21. January 2008, 20:52
It's too early to say I am not abandoned, until I see it on Apple (web) store. If I was a Dell customer, then I'd complain about it as well. If they don't fix it, I would try to plug the card myself, if it fits (forget about warranty) and hate from Dell, too. I don't care which company it is, if they do not address to my problem.
Non-Troppo # 23. January 2008, 18:27
Ismail # 24. January 2008, 01:43
Lookng forward to hear your offer
Right now, I am using Leopard. Why? I guess I missed it. When I arrived home, I didn't press option key to get Boot Camp menu to boot from Windows. I hate Apple, but I love OS X. It seems it's given up crashing, too! I will try to keep as up as possible to see how stable it is. But it won't be reliable, because I have installed NTFS 3G for 10.5, smcFan Control and may be few more things that might touch things that aren't supposed to be touched.
You see, making and maintaining composable software is more than difficult. There are thousands of developers who don't read documentations and don't play carefully when they are making a software that either hosts third party components or itself is a third party component. It's nearly impossible to debug and reproduce problems, even if user reports them, in particular because in many cases it might not be possible for vendors to debug their code with exact composition that customer has. I have never seen source code of MacFuse or NTFS 3G. They do good job, it's a low-level and fragile task to grant write access to a closed spec. proprietary file system; NTFS from Microsoft. They are quite popular programs and probably written really carefully. But one little "assumption" or a touch they make might cause rest of the system to become unstable. Similarly, Finder may "assume" a particular call does not modify some internal state but some weirdo plugin creates a thread that raises an exception (or may be doesn't catch it then it propagates to Finder) or another signal in Finder that modifies the state and other plugins that cached the state returns to Finder and Finder says; "What the... invariant violation, can't recover from this catastrophic situation, G'nite".
Disclaimer:
This is just a speculation, I have no idea about any problem, conflict whatsoever about Finder or NTFS 3G or MacFuse.
But we see similar cases where everybody makes an assumption (secretly, of course; assumptions are part of big commercial secrets) and goes along with it. They sometimes change their minds, assumptions secretly change as well, and you know nothing about it until your application/plugin crashes and you then find out the previous author of the code has been replaced and new developer thought that "why to maintain existing code while I can re-invent the wheel - of course, I assume the road that this wheel will drive on will be icy and therefore I should my wheel should be spiked".
I'll tell a real life story in a different blog entry about re-inventing the wheel, or "how to reset number_of_developers_who_know_the_code"...
Non-Troppo # 24. January 2008, 09:07
And indeed, it is often amazing, considering the nonlinear complexity, that computers work *at all*!!!