Who really needs a Macpro now?

[digitaldog]

This has been answered several times already.

- those who need more than 16gb ram,
- those who need to use PCI cards (audio, video, SCSI,...),

Both valid! The others, not so sure. I’m also thinking of just getting a new, fast Retina MacBook Pro, hooking it up to my NEC SpectraView’s (no issue with matt/glossy and Retina on location). I don’t see why setting up an external RAID would be an issue, especially in light of the Thuderbolt options.

The Retina is said to be able to drive THREE external displays.

[BJL]

I understand this issue, and solve it with an external keyboard. I set up my laptop just like a desktop -- with all the usual attachments: monitor, keyboard, external hard drive, ethernet cable, tablet, USB hub, etc. ...

I'm looking forward to a Thunderbolt hub, which may allow me to have just one cable attached to my laptop for all the external devices.

I am looking forward to the idea of Thunderbolt connectors docking a laptop to all kinds of things, including not just monitors, keyboard, battery charging and fast external disks, but also a supplementary multicore coprocessor. For example, maybe the PCIe part of Thunderbolt (especially the promised future even faster versions, up to 100Gb/s) could connect to an auxiliary processor box based on something like the new 50+ core Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor or an NVIDIA Tesla GPU.

[dturina]

I am looking forward to the idea of Thunderbolt connectors docking a laptop to all kinds of things, including not just monitors, keyboard, battery charging and fast external disks, but also a supplementary multicore coprocessor.

Now there's an idea. It could work, in the same way in which GPU computing works, but only if the benefits of more processing power outweigh the price of moving data around the bus.

[John.Murray]

Currently very expensive - but coming soon....

http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt.asp

[Farmer]

Hah - whack a couple of RevoDrives in one for "external/portable" storage ;-)