Are you sure? Thunderbolt 2 does not increase bandwidth over Thunderbolt, but it does make bandwidth use more flexible - it seems like there would be plenty there to drive a 1080p display plus most external storage solutions.

If Italian products are being advertised to Italians, then the service tax on the adds should be paid to the Italian government.

Why is that so, if all of the equipment the ads are served from is not in Italy?

Are you saying (and you are) that someone in Italy who wanted to advertise on a popular blog hosted in the U.S., should not be able to do so? Or that the blog owner should be required to pay taxes in Italy even though all costs are incurred in the U.S.?

It's not like the person in Italy it not already paying taxes on his internet connection. It's not like they would not pay taxes if they bought something from the ad. It's not like the company who bought the ad is not paying Italy corporate income tax anyway.

It makes no sense that someone operating in a totally different state should have to pay any taxes at all based only on where someone is browsing from, or who buys services from them.

Apple's mantra is to make one really easy way to do things they think people want to do and at first, that does draw people in, but as they start to get comfortable and try to push the boundaries, they realize they can't.

That is 100% wrong, and a complete misunderstanding of what Apple does - even in fact why Apple products are popular.

Apple optimizes for the easy case, yes. But to make something REALLY easy requires a ton of complexity underneath, which they expose to those interested or technically inclined.

Even iOS, the supposedly closed system, Apple does nothing to stop jailbreaking - they even hire jailbreakers. They now that having a contingent of highly technical users that want to work without boundaries is a good thing, so Apple does nothing to stop them - and unlike many other companies Apple stuff is written in such a way that it's easy for technical people to make great use of it once you are "inside the system" as it were.

Who got tens of millions of advanced UNIX systems in people's homes? It wasn't Linux. It was Apple.

It's not the aspect of there being dual GPU's per se. Just the fact that Apple has a framework (OpenCL) and hardware with massive computation power on tap if you make use of it.

CUDA is actually a big success story there; Apple just wants to bring that same success to an open standard that is not tied to one hardware maker.

Most computers and laptops make swapping the HDD very easy. A few screws, that's it.

Which still sucks. That's why for a while now I greatly prefer using a dual SATA dock with bare drives.

You also have to open the case, yet more latches or screws, sometimes having to unplug things as well. And generally you have to shut down the system.

Just easier to get an external storage box like a Drobo or some kind of multi-disk case and pull things in and out. I was doing that even back when I had a Powermac because it was simpler and easier.

The last thing I want is another two boxes and two cables on my desk.

Why? They don't have to be on the desk you know, in fact they can just be elsewhere on the network..

So, you really think a netbook is inherently more useful than, say, a 16" Alienware powerhouse?

That is a bad comparison because it misses the point of WHEN smaller is better. Smaller is better if you have enough (or more) compute power in the smaller item to do the same job as the larger one.

I had a Mac Pro myself; it was a beast. It was hard to move around if I needed to, and harder to get to hard drives to add or replace. For what most people do with workstations these days, smaller is more useful - because we are often re-configuring (or moving) workspaces, we are working in smaller areas. Or we are working at home (as people do these days much more often) and may need to change areas we work in.

I also just recently went from a 17" laptop to a 15" laptop. The larger screen was nice but the new one has the same resolution, and is more powerful and also has improved battery life and much, much faster internal storage and external ports. So that is in fact far better. Smaller means it's easier to carry in more bags and also lighter.

No, you have one cable running from the Mac Pro to your rack with storage and monitor (thunderbolt)... the mouse and keyboard are of course wireless.

The Mac Pro means fewer, or at worst the same number of cables as you had before (because anyone serious was using external storage anyway). Only with a lot less weight and bulk to cart around.

So, Apple's typical customer cares more about aesthetic than usefulness?

Smaller in just about any area of computing, IS more useful.

I had a Mac Pro at one point, and the only thing I ever really put into the case was more hard drives. But external cases are really better for that anyway because they are easier to get to, as long as you don't lose any speed accessing external storage - which you do not with thunderbolt (or heck even with USB 3.0 if you are talking spinning media).

The new Mac Pro is more useful to the people that still need workstations and cannot be served by consumer PC's.

I would personally have liked to see a 17" update.

But I finally gave in and bought the most recent 15" retina. It's fine, if you enable scaling mode to use all of the pixels on the screen directly it has the same resolution as the 17" did. You just increase font sizes a little bit.

It's also quite a bit lighter and has better battery life.

Or Apple's mistaken focus on OpenCL over CUDA.

So I'm curious why you think Apple tying themselves to a single video card maker (nVidia owns CUDA) vs. a standard (OpenCL) that works with any video card from any maker (including nVdia, and also Intel integrated graphics) is better?

I mean, this is Slashdot so I thought we were for standards. But I guess you prefer to tie yourself to a single hardware vendor. Good luck with that.

You know, if you don't put your computer in a miniature trashcan, you can install a more efficient cooling system.

Kind go amusing that you don't understand the most impressive aspect of the Mac Pro redesign, with a common thermal core that is in fact more efficient at bleeding heat than stuffing all of your parts in a box shaped like an oven and with nearly the same ventilation possibilities...

You know what else is round? A Jet Engine. They seem to manage heat OK.

Thing is, people are starting to realize how much of a corner Apple backs them in to and are starting to favor more open options (ie, anything else) so we're seeing Android growing in the market.

That's exactly why Linux finally won the desktop wars.

Oh wait.

If you know about hard drive failure rates, the new design is an even better idea - putting large hard drives in external cases where it's easier to swap them out.

The internal storage is all very fast SSD, and doesn't really have the same level of failure rate as a spinning disk.

no I was saying apple should give them out for FREE with an 3K system.

Why, so I can add them to the box of extra mice and keyboards?

Far better to let people use the solutions they already have and like than ship with some default that is just there to meet a checkbox list.

Dual video cards, despite this not being a gaming system. Granted, some media editing applications can utilize multiple GPUs for computing - like Adobe Premiere Pro CC - but many cannot

On the other hand if there are a lot of professional systems that have a ton of power available to those that program in OpenCL, might not we see a new class of accelerated applications?

If nothing else it will probably get Blender to support OpenCL.

Apple has historically tried to promote a more advanced standard to make possible applications that are not written yet, but can be with new technologies.

And while currently not everything uses OpenCL, now there is powerful motivation to do so. But Photoshop, Aperture and Final Cut all make use of this hardware so there's lots of people that will benefit.