Some might argue that Apple has left behind Pro Tools and other professional audio users a long time ago when they dropped the 'cheesegrater' Mac Pro 5,1, Their pursuit of power-saving features and the disabling of under-the-hood options, together with a change in hardware choices with the 6,1 Mac Pro ‘Trash Can’ and then with the announcement of the Mac Pro 7,1 new-style cheese-grater is Apple still making life hard for Professional Audio users?
This article was originally written back in 2016, 3 years into the life of the Mac Pro 6,1 Trash can, and has been recently updated to include the new Mac Pro 7,1 cheese-grater.
The remodelling of the Mac Pro form factor from a tower with PCI-e slots, space for hard drives etc to a unit with no card space, no internal hard drives options and very little user configuration options, surely will make it harder and more expensive for audio professionals to use it. Pro Tools HD users will need an expansion chassis to take the Avid cards, then all the peripherals that we could put into the cheese-grater all have to connected externally onto the Trash Can.
Then take a look at the changes in the Mac OS that Russ highlighted in his article Pro Tools 12 - Yosemite And El Capitan Graphics Performance Compared And Our Advice and our discussions in Podcast 216, where our advice for Pro Tools users is NOT to go to the current OS El Capitan but to use Yosemite.
The desire for convergence of OS and iOS makes power saving king in a list of priorities, sometimes to the determent of other processes needed by more power-hungry applications. Security is also way up the list too locking out users from implementing either basic preferences or workarounds to improve performance. Both are admirable and essential aims in a world that is acutely aware of limited resources and security threats.
Added together these two priorities in the OS make Macs a harder option for the average person wanting to maximise performance.
Software is one side of the coin and hardware the other. It seems that Apple is leaving behind the computer options that make the most sense to us. The new Mac Pro hasn't been updated since its launch in 2013. Moving onto the Mac Mini, it is a real shame that Apple discontinued the Mac Mini Quad-core i7 server as that was a very cost-effective and powerful solution for Pro Tools users. The iMac has some powerful options and was updated around 6 months ago, but with an integrated monitor this isn't the most flexible Mac for Pro Tools users.
Now it may be that there are updates just around the corner for some of these older Macs, but when you take into consideration these other factors, it doesn't make me feel very optimistic.
So it pains me to say this, as a firm Apple user (even fanboy) who doesn't have a Windows device in the house, that it really looks as if on their current trajectory, Apple is making it harder and harder for the professional who uses applications like Pro Tools.
To continue to work and have a viable and efficient system we are going to have to use older hardware like Mac Pro cheese graters and Mac Mini servers, running older versions of the OS, all of which is getting harder to come by. For example, if you didn't buy Yosemite from the App Store, you cannot get it now. Apple only stocks the current OS in the App Store. If you did buy Yosemite then you are OK as you will be able to download it from the App Store.
Update: 2019 - Apple Announce New Style Cheesegrater
In this article, we look at the different options that will be available in the new cheese-grater style Mac Pro, which options would be most appropriate for a Mac Pro 7,1 Pro Tools computer and how much a new Mac Pro optimised for Pro Tools is likely to cost based on the information we have at this point.