The New Black Tower Mac Pro

[Timeline]

Have you read the info on this round "aluminum replacement product" slated for a few months away?

No PCI slots, No Firewire. Apparently were supposed to go buy a PCI Card Cage and a Firewire card. I'm tired of being forced to spend more, how about you?

In the past, repetitive products came down in price. Maybe the Google guy was right, It's over for Apple since Steve Jobs died. Just my .02c

[Michael Canavan]

A Thunderbolt to firewire connector is $25.
Thunderbolt is obviously meant to replace PCI.
I would be upset about this too, but my experience with PCI is mediocre at best.
Recently installing the best reviewed USB 3 card was a disaster, the Mac Pro responds like an old jalopy, you have to push the power button over and over until it eventually starts.

IMO it's these sort of faulty third party variables that get introduced with PCI that have had Apple switch to Thunderbolt. This keeps every peripheral at a safe distance from direct contact with the computers power supply, and you can see this in every aspect of the new Mac Pro, more storage beyond stock is handled through the Thunderbolt port as well.

So Although it's a greater hassle for the consumer on some levels, in the end of the day the bulk of Mac Pro users are going to have a better experience with the new machine based on less problems associated with expanding the towers with third party devices tapping into the computers logic board directly.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Just as we no longer lament the loss of SCSI ports, serial ports, or ADB mouse ports, we will (if we live long enough) laugh at those old USB, FireWire, and even Thunderbolt ports, not to mention the loss of silicon to organic, plasma, and/or nano processors.

Yeah, it's market based and clearly a revenue source. At the same time it's also moving forward. Sometimes it's easy to forget the computer industry and other high tech industries are basically in their infancy. Just like other toddlers, they are growing fast and changing even more quickly. I dare say the industry hasn't even reached puberty. It's probably just loosing its first set of baby teeth. Just sayin'

[fullertime]

Well put MIDI Life Crisis!

[bayswater]

No PCI slots,

Even when PCI was supported, it was like a yacht, a large hole to throw money in. 324 to 424, UAD-1 to UAD-2 PCI to PCIx to PCIe, and so on. I'm glad to be out of it.

From Apple's perspective, I can see why they'd drop it. They're developing a new product, and don't have a lot of incentive to support obsolete or soon to be obsolete hardware, and every reason to develop new markets.

It wasn't even that obvious that Apple had a good reason to stay in the "pro" desktop market, and by taking a radical departure from the past, they have at least put forth something that has a chance of distinguishing itself from the competition.

[jlaudon]

It's the 'what, no floppy disk drive??!!' experience again

[bayswater]

It doesn't have a floppy drive? Outrageous. Just as a joke, Apple should make a USB floppy drive an option for $79.

[mikehalloran]

It doesn't have a floppy drive? Outrageous. Just as a joke, Apple should make a USB floppy drive an option for $79.

Again? It was discontinued a long time ago.

Seriously. My Mac+ system cost me $6,000 in 1986. I ran a business with it and it was worth every penny. Adjusted for inflation, that's what? Probably the price of the next Mac Pro. BTW, the 20MB SCSI hard drive and 25MB tape backup were external.

[James Steele]

It doesn't have a floppy drive? Outrageous. Just as a joke, Apple should make a USB floppy drive an option for $79.

LOL! I have a couple of Dell laptops and I got the optional swappable floppy drives for both of them. You pop out the optical drive and can pop in the floppy. Totally silly.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Even the amazing Zip drives make no sense. 100MB. Whoa! You can get a 128GB flash/thumb drive for less than the cost of a Zip drive.

...the times, they are a changin'

[bayswater]

LOL! I have a couple of Dell laptops and I got the optional swappable floppy drives for both of them. You pop out the optical drive and can pop in the floppy.

I have one of those. Came with a USB cable. It's surprising how often I've used it to read old disk images, and even old DOS formatted Atari floppies.

[dosuna11]

I purchased a USB disk drive for my G4 and it still is readable on my G5. Came in handy in retrieving old files from my 1986 1040 ST Atari days to use the better quality VI's we have today. Those lost MIDI files were like artifacts lost in time (1986) with the sounds available in that era.