To follow up on some of this discussion... it seems the consensus (which is
the direction I was leaning) is that the iMac is probably a better
investment as an R workstation/desktop than the new MacPro.  Setting up
RStudio server is also an intriguing idea, but, at this point, my workflow
tends to consist of bioinformatics/QIIME work on Linux servers -> R on
desktop.    But it would be nice to have a central installation so that I
do not have to worry about keeping multiple installations (complete with
tons of packages) consistent!   FWIW, I did do a clean install on the
laptop and performance is much, much, improved!


On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 11:03 AM, epi <massimodisasha@gmail.com> wrote:

> In my laptop settings i installed 2X8GB ram
> and I replaced the dvd drive in favor of a second SSD drive (so to have
> 2x512 GB SSD, 1TB in total)
> using this sort of adaptors [1]
>
> Then i reinstalled OSX on a SW raid 0, with a sensible performance
> improvement.
>
> Massimo.
>
> [1]
> http://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Special-Designed-macbook-SuperDrive/dp/B0057V95M6
>
>
> On Mar 11, 2014, at 1:20 PM, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
> On 11/03/2014 16:40, Simon Urbanek wrote:
>
> On Mar 11, 2014, at 10:35 AM, Stephen B. Cox <myrddincox@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anyone had any experience running fairly intensive analysis on a new
> MacPro?  I am looking to upgrade my desktop, and 80% of my time is spent in
> RStudio/Latex/Sweave... working primarily with microbiome analysis (large
> datasets).  Been considering a new MacPro, but I am a little hesitant
> about; a) moving my desktop to Mac,
>
>
> 'large datasets' are in the eye of the beholder: you would need to
> quantify that.
>
> That is typically a big plus - especially if you use Windows. It is in
> fact probably the single major reason to pick a MacPro today, although I
> would probably rather get an iMac in that case.
>
>
> and b) whether the MacPro performance will be worth the cost (it almost
> seems geared more towards graphics than anything else).
>
>
> I don't have any hands-on experience with the new MacPro but its specs are
> underwhelming. It is an experiment - if you can leverage the GPUs for
> computing, then it may be worth it, but it's still quite hard to do so.
> With AMD you'e essentially stuck with OpenCL and other than core support so
> you can write your own kernels, there is very little else in R to leverage
> that. Today, you're much better off getting a server/workstation which you
> can load with RAM and more cores for computing for the same price (running
> Linux, obviously, you really don't want to do computing on Windows with R)
> - and use your desktop/laptop just to access its computing power.
>
>
> For some background - I have worked on Macs for years, but moved my main
> work desktop to Windows about 2 years ago.  I also do quite a bit of work
> in QIIME - which can be done on the mac (not the PC) and is both RAM and
> CPU intensive... so, I can benefit from multiple cores, large RAM, etc.  My
> 2011 MacBook Pro seems extremely sluggish at this point when running basic
> tasks (probably need to do a fresh OS install),
>
>
> If you encounter sluggishness in OS X is pretty much always a disk issue.
> Wipe the disk or even better put in a SSD - it's more than worth it - a
> whole different world.
>
>
> Or a 'fusion' drive in an iMac, which gives you enough SSD advantage
> unless you really use repeatedly a lot of disc space (and works well for
> me).  The MacPro's I/O benchmarks are impressive, but you would need to be
> able to generate data at those speeds to make use of them.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Simon
>
>
> but the Windows machine has
> never slowed down.  This has added to some of my hesitation.
>
> Anyone have opinions/experience using R on the new MacPro?
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 1:05 PM, Simon Urbanek
> <simon.urbanek@r-project.org>wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 10, 2014, at 12:43 PM, Nick <franken_beans2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Good afternoon, I am looking at buying my first Mac and thought i'd ask
>
> for advice for what I should get. I have it down to the two models below
> (but am open to realistic suggestions).
>
>
> I will primarily be using R for machine learning packages, and the data
>
> sets are very large. If any other specs are needed let me know.
>
>
>
> "data sets are very large' - well, the machines listed below are certainly
> not suitable to run anything on large data ;) so you may want to quantify
> what you mean here. You want as much RAM as possible for large data since
> that is the single item that will cause huge drop-off in performance when
> exhausted and R certainly can take quite a bit of memory if this is really
> your only machine to run computing on. Note that in modern Apple laptops
> you cannot add more memory later, so this is rather important factor.
>
> Given a choice of the two MacBook Air is not a computing machine - it's
> optimized for power consumption, not speed, so the only reason to go for it
> is if you're looking for a light notebook and don't care about the
> computing speed as much.
>
> Cheers,
> Simon
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> 13-inch MacBook Air ($1,349)
> 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
> 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
> 128GB Flash Storage
>
> 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina ($1,399.00)
> 2.4GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz
> 8GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
> 128GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
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>
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>
>
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>
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>
>
>
> --
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>
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