 Shortly after releasing the Mac Pro, Apple delivered on their promise of a rack mountable version of the same machine and naturally immediately the web absolutely lit up with speculation that Apple was finally creating a spiritual successor to their XServe lineup of servers and Maybe even Mac OS server could this be Apple's triumphant return to the data center? No, that's not happening. Apple is 100% laser focused on building cloud services that actually don't even run on their own hardware and Nothing about this machine changes that so Let's take a look at this and find out Why Apple saw fit to create a rack mount machine that you would be absolutely nuts? To use as a server if you use Wi-Fi a lot on your smartphone Why pay for a fixed monthly data plan stop paying for what you don't use with Ting? You can take a look at how much you'll save through their calculator at Linus.ting.com. Let's start with the price I've got a base spec rack Pro here and For a similarly performant eight core machine off of thinkmate like a proper server one with similar upgrade ability I'm looking at quite literally half the price Not only that but one of the largest costs associated with building out a data center is naturally the data center itself Which you pay for by the square foot now the Mac Pro may be very powerful from a like a workstation perspective But space efficient it is not at four server rack units Or four years I would expect for like a CPU performance oriented deployment anywhere from 8 to 16 CPUs compared to the Mac Pros one and If I needed you know more GPU power I would expect anywhere from 10 to 16 GPUs in four years as opposed to Apple's well four And not only that but the connectivity on this thing is a big problem. Let's take a closer look at it here We've got a hardware access hatch here I actually haven't looked at anyone else's coverage of this thing Not many people are checking this one out because frankly speaking it doesn't make a lot of sense for most people And at the front we've got the familiar cheese grater styling Very open great for airflow Not necessarily optimal for the data center because there's like on the desktop version no dust filtration or any such thing That's fascinating I had intended to lay it down flat, but there's actually more for us to look at here So let's start with these release latches on the bottom. This is a little different So our front IO is handled by a little daughter board here there we go We've got our two Thunderbolt 3 ports up there and then back here For whatever reason is this right side up or no? This is the bottom for whatever reason our access to the memory slots is certainly still easy, but Only because we have it out on the workbench right now Not because it would be easy to get out if it was actually installed in a server rack This would be a royal pain in the butt to get at you would have to pull the thing out and like Work on it from down here then come on there we go Okay, yeah There it is so we've got our single storage drive there in our base configuration and then of course the Quad channel memory configuration that Apple ships is their base spec for whatever stupid reason just like the desktop it supports up to six channels Of memory and with the right CPU up to 1.5 terabytes of RAM now we get to have another look we've got Quick releases so these are nice and tool-less for the rack one kind of sucky thing about them is There doesn't seem to be any way to lock the server in the rack. That's a pretty typical feature So you just have like a through hole like this and you could put something like a security bolt in there I mean, I haven't had a look at the rails yet So it's possible that they take care of that feature and then we've got two more releases here and here to Take off the top cover Yep, it's a Mac Pro alright that appears to be basically the same motherboard as the regular desktop Mac Pro and in fact It's kind of weird actually how they've just kind of got this open space in the front here So There's our CPU cooler exact same passive design I mean not strictly not really passive because there's a fan right in front of it and then because I haven't got any Expansion cards like an afterburner card or a dual GPU MPX module. I've just got the regular Radeon Pro 580X right here It's quite a it's quite open inside. So I've just got their I O card So that gives us a look at the back where we've got dual USB type A's There goes as well as a couple of Thunderbolt 3's and then I just have a couple of HDMI's and then dual 10 gig ethernet And the plug for the power supply here one of the most notable things about the internals though is the lack of storage expansion Considering the size of the machine so you can put that upgrade bay in here that gives you two three and a half inch storage Drives and you can put as many PCI Express based SSDs in it as you want But that's not a lot for a machine this size, especially for a server With that said that's not inherently a problem in the enterprise because it's quite normal to have sort of single use or specialized systems When we looked at SFU supercomputer you saw some of this So there would be storage only machines with almost no compute to speak of just chock full of hard drives CPU only machines with a ton of RAM for big simulations GPU machines that could lend their muscle when needed over the network and Actually that is where the real problem lies not the inability to put hard drives in this thing so I was jazzed to see 10 gig networking on the iMac Pro and the Mac mini and dual 10 gig RFJ 45 connectors on the new Mac Pro, but even 2 by 10 gigabit is Nothing in the data center where they've been using 40 gigabit for 10 years and largely converted to 50 or 100 gigabit networking or higher along with Crazy tech like PCI Express fabrics for high-speed storage. Yes PCI Express networking With that said other than the weird bottom RAM access The fact that this thing is almost completely tool-less like its desktop brethren is pretty sweet So all that I want to do now then is throw it into a rack and see how the rails work That's pretty satisfying in it Now it shouldn't surprise me at all, but naturally Apple is using their own System for attaching the rails so you can't just go get some Generic super micro rails or whatever honestly speaking. It's not like it's uncommon in servers anyway, though Apple You guys even managed to make server rack mount rails look sexy This is nice having the packaging keep the rails from sliding apart and slicing your fingers open Definitely appreciate that pretty Pretty bog standard ish. It's nice if you're familiar with rack mount cases at all this won't really be much of a stretch for you Neat that is a slick tool-less system All right Remember Always have a helper when you're mounting a rack machine like this Especially if you're trying ever so hard not to scratch. Hey Tyler, okay That is a nice smooth slide action There you go, there's that locking mechanism just pop it out like that lock it in like that I Sure looks a lot better than the other server. I have in here. It's a really old store in here. That's our first one It's obviously not in use anymore Sort of raises the question of like How to use it now though doesn't it because there are a handful of other things now that I've got it in a rack that are Obviously not designed for data center use How about your remote access to it? It would be pretty typical for a server to have not just your two high-speed networking ports or However many you have but also an additional one that's called a management port Unfortunately, the Mac Pro has no such thing So there's no way to access it remotely from outside of the data center to do things like Reboot the machine if it's hung up or you know update the firmware or whatever the case may be things that You would not be able to do normally Unless you are actually sitting in front of the machine plugged into a display and peripherals On that subject it is still in the year 2020 Quite typical for server and enterprise gear to be equipped with a VGA port We will find no such thing here and therefore you'll have some potential incompatibility issues with things like the little carts that they'll Push around in a data center to you know quickly plug into stuff that's not behaving as you would expect Another big problem right here It's typical For an actual server that's not even a VGA port It's a typical server that's designed for 24-7 operation to have not even necessarily just two but up to three Redundant power supply units that the system can fail over to in the event of like a catastrophic PSU failure So you can see these modules can not just be Swapped out but they can actually be hot swapped while the system is operating and the whole thing can operate off of just one of them Meanwhile the Mac Pro for all of its Costliness has just a single power supply I mean I have no reason to think it's not a perfectly high quality power supply But one power supply is still just one power supply No it would appear that the way that Apple actually intends for you to use this thing is just like you would a regular Mac Pro You just plug it into the wall Plug your monitor in directly from the back and like you know press the button And operate it like you would a completely normal desktop computer except that You happen to have A rack next to you and your computer's in a rack. Seems to be just as quiet as the desktop version though That's nice enough about who it is not for though. Let's talk about who the rack pro is for I think Neil Parfit has done a spectacular job of not just explaining but Demonstrating who this thing is for people like him He's worked as a composer and mixer on a ton of TV and film projects and his series chronicling his transition from a super janky setup made up of two trashcan Mac Pros with endless dongles to the 2019 Mac Pro is Excellent for those of you who didn't know some of the tools for professional audio work like logic are Exclusive to Mac OS and Mac OS is low latency handling of audio is absolutely legendary It leaves windows completely in the dust Anyway in the series he talks about the vendor specific hardware that's required from any of the software applications He uses the performance implications of having all of these CPU threads and RAM available I mean, I never considered the importance of having Thousands of instruments available at an instance notice, but the way he explains it's like oh, yeah That makes a ton of sense and he talked about the way the expand ability allows him to install all the interface cards that he needs What a concept right? Anyway better late than never Apple And he threw all of it though I was honestly really impressed both by his videos and also by Apple's willingness to go ahead and Create a product like this for just one customer like not just Neil specifically But audio professionals like him because that is What this is? Don't kid yourself in the data center the quiet operation of the Mac Pro is absolutely meaningless But in audio particularly a live production it matters a lot So yeah it's not a server and the only reason this unit is rack mounted and the reason that people will be willing to pay the $500 premium for that feature is that basically all other high-end audio equipment is also rack mounted and Having everything neatly stacked up like this or ready for easy transport Is really helpful from an organization and efficiency perspective so in summary. It's the exact same machine For the exact same customer, but with handles like this not Like this ting does mobile phone service differently There's no contracts no overage fees and no other carrier tricks You just pay a fair price for the talk text and data that you actually end up using each month and ting gives you the ultimate Control over your cell phone account you can set alerts and caps for each device on your account to keep your usage or the usage Of your dependence in check they've got wider nationwide LTE coverage by using T mobile sprint And now Verizon's networks which means great coverage from coast to coast Almost any phone will work with ting from that ancient Motorola Razor sitting in your basement to the new Motorola Razor That's probably not in your basement or an iPhone 11 You can check your phone's compatibility at Linus dot ting.com and you'll get $25 in credit when you sign up so go check it out So thanks for checking out this video if you guys are looking for more Mac content Maybe check out our hack pro series where we are attempting actually we're not quite done yet But it's mostly working to build a PC equivalent to this that we've managed to install Mac OS on it's pretty sick I'm gonna have that link below I have now moved up to the big leagues and wasted my money on two Mac pros this time. It's the rack mount edition