Egg Freckles

John Gruber broke the news, the next Mac Pro will be a modular system.

Apple is currently hard at work on a “completely rethought” Mac Pro, with a modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and big honking hot-running GPUs, and which should make it easier for Apple to update with new components on a regular basis. They’re also working on Apple-branded pro displays to go with them.

Phil Schiller elaborates:

With regards to the Mac Pro, we are in the process of what we call “completely rethinking the Mac Pro”. We’re working on it. We have a team working hard on it right now, and we want to architect it so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we’re committed to making it our highest-end, high-throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers.

As part of doing a new Mac Pro — it is, by definition, a modular system — we will be doing a pro display as well. Now you won’t see any of those products this year; we’re in the process of that. We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do.

As a past Power Mac customer I am excited about Apple’s future “modular Mac,” but I have questions about what modular means to Apple and its customers.

1. Does modular mean the future Mac Pro can be upgraded with off-the-shelf PC components?
2. Does modular mean the future Mac Pro is a collection of proprietary parts that can only be procured from Apple?
3. Does modular mean the future Mac Pro is a series of separate modules connected via high-speed I/O?
4. Does modular mean the future Mac Pro is a single self-contained computer designed to anticipate the tolerances of demanding professional components.

As life long Apple observer I can say option number one is unlikely. I would welcome a future Mac Pro that can be upgraded with off-the-shelf PC components, but I don’t think Apple would support — let alone provide the connectivity to make it happen. I don’t expect a future modular Mac Pro to include full-length industry-standard PCIe slots.

As a ex-Mac Genius option two seems more plausible. Apple has rarely offered upgrade components outside of additional RAM and a optional wireless card. Sure, there have been upgradable graphics cards available in the past from Apple retail stores, but they were quickly outdated and rarely updated. Selling modular upgrade components for the one percent of professional Mac users is not a business I can see Apple getting into.

Option three is not that far from the 2013 Mac Pro we have today. If a series of separate modules connected via high-speed I/O is Apple’s strategy, I doubt they would have held a press briefing to expose a future modular Mac system.

Finally we have option four, a single self-contained computer designed to anticipate the tolerances of demanding professional components. The parts in this modular Mac Pro would not be user upgradable or available at retail. Instead the system as whole would be designed in such a way so as make more powerful models possible in the future without a drastic redesign.

Option four is the modular Mac I think Apple will build, but as a current Hackintosh owner I would like to be wrong.

Since the release of Mac OS X Lion:

• Holding down Command + R at startup told your Mac to boot from the local Recovery Partition, allowing you to restore your Mac’s installed operating system.
• Holding down Command + Option + R at startup told your Mac to NetBoot from Apple’s Internet Recovery, allowing you to restore your Mac to its original operating system.

Apple:

macOS Recovery installs different versions of macOS depending on the key combination you press while starting up. Hold down one of these combinations immediately after pressing the power button to turn on your Mac. Release when you see the Apple logo or a spinning globe.

The new Option-Command-R keyboard shortcut lets you do an Internet recovery of latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac. So, rather than boot from a slow hard drive, wrangle the Mac App Store, download the installer, and then launch it, I just held down the keys and let it download and install all at once. The time estimate was way off (under), but other than that it worked smoothly and got my Mac booting again.

I became a FreeHand fan during the Macromedia era after the release Freehand 5.5. Despite its falling popularity, I have always found Freehand’s powerful page layout tools and unique approach to vector illustration appealing. Even after FreeHand’s untimely demise in 2005, you could still find a copy of FreeHand MX in my Dock until the release of Mac OS Lion and the end of PowerPC support on the Mac. Even today with modern vector drawing options like Adobe Illustrator CC available to me, I still long for the days when FreeHand was never more than a click away.

Fortunately for me, and the many FreeHand fans like me, all is not lost. The FreeHand Forum provides links to the once freely distributed trial version of FreeHand MX. And Adobe of all companies provides the serial numbers that can keep FreeHand MX launching past its first 30 days.

You will still need a Mac, a Hackintosh, or a virtual machine running Snow Leopard or earlier if you want to run FreeHand MX under Mac OS X. Personally I prefer to run FreeHand MX under a Windows VM or Wine. Both are easy to setup and promise to remain compatible well into the future.

Joe Rossignol writing for MacRumors:

For years, Apple has sent new Genius hires to its Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino, or sometimes an auxiliary campus in Austin or Atlanta, to receive hands-on training for up to three weeks. Recently, however, Apple appears to have stopped offering these group-oriented trips, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple’s off-site Genius Training program has been replaced by an in-store, self-guided experience using company-provided reference materials, according to a source. The training now involves watching web-based seminars through the Apple Technical Learning Administration System, or ATLAS, another source said.

Customer interactions and role-playing took place during the two-weeks of “Core Training” before my store opened. My time in Cupertino was spent learning “wisdom;” how to quickly diagnose machines, order parts, and perform prompt repairs.

Like Stephen I discharged the CRT in a eMac, peeled back the white plastic layers of a iBook G3, and replaced the logic board on a Titanium PowerBook G4. I ate at Cafe Macs, attended a Beer Bash, and saw Steve Jobs speak in Town Hall. As a Mac Genius I got to experience a larger Apple than the confines of my 30-foot store back home. I am sad future Mac Genius won’t have the same experiences as mine.

When I was a Mac Genius in 2003, Apple retail charged $30 for the installation of extra RAM, Airport wireless networking, or software purchased in the store.. For most Mac models $30 was a silly expense. It didn’t take much effort to install Microsoft Office on a iMac, an Airport Card in a iBook G3, or extra RAM in a Power Mac G4 tower. (Having a Mac Genius crack open an original Mac mini to install hardware upgrades was probably worth the $30 price tag.) Thankfully Apple did away with this practice for the sale of new Macs. They called this free service a “Mac Pack.”

One of the unique features of the free Mac Pack was the migration of files from a customer’s home computer to their new Mac. This offer brought all kinds of computers into the Apple Store, and not all of them were Macs. Sure there were restrictions about how old the computer could be or what operating system they were running, but as Mac Genius we tried to help everyone. That included customers who brought in old PCs running Windows 98, or old Macs that barely turned on. Against Apple’s best guidance we would sometimes take these old machines apart to extract their hard drives to transfer their data. We would always put them pack together again, and in the case of more than a few Macs fix them up so that they ran better than new.

A lot has changed about the Mac Pack from 2003, but I am not surprised to hear that when BritishTechLive brought a 30 year old prototype Macintosh SE into the Apple Store a Mac Genius was able to help him get it up and running. Thanks to Stephen Hackett from 512pixels for sharing this amazing story.