I hate to say it, but I agree. All signs are pointing to the demise of the proline. Here's some of my reasons why I feel that way.
1. They are really slow on updating their MacPro line.
Since Intel is only major updating the Xeon processors on yearly basis and the server class motherboard designs are generally on a 2 year update cycle ( with minor tweaks between years for the Xeon updates ). What is so slow.
Increasing the Mac Pro is a server class hardware. That means in general the update rate is going to slow down. Apple had to synch up to Intel Xeon since flipping over from G5's but it has been long enough that release schedules have synchronized to a large extent now.
So the whole should update on "236" day average that macrumors buyers guide hints at is bogus. That period of time is not grounded in the parts or the designs being leveraged.
Apple released machines for the Core-i mobile laptop market after everyone else did. MBP is now top selling mac option on the online Apple store. So much for have to release on same day Intel drops a press release.
Go to that section of the website and I swear you can hear crickets.
Bluntly, there are lots of folks here on macrumors that hear exactly what they want to hear.
2. They haven't stayed on top of development of Final Cut Studio. It's really out of date compared to Premiere CS5. No support for 64bit yet?
The Finder took how long to go 64-bit? Does that mean the Apple had lost its commitment to the Finder ? For large applications there are lots of internal moving parts. It can very well be that some internal framework made a bunch of bonehead 32-bit assumptions. Unraveling that takes time if have fixed resources.
Apple has also cut the price of FCS how many times over its lifetime ? Apple isn't necessarily going to the upper stratospheric niche markets.
3. They discontinued Shake a few years ago saying they were working on a replacement. That replacement has yet to materialize.
Shake wasn't originally a Mac program. Didn't release on Mac OS X until after Apple bought them if recall correctly. That isn't exactly the most representative software case to form an argument over.
Separate compositing software just may not have been worth the effort.
It is not like Apple has banned 3rd parties from filling this gap. In fact, if want a competitive market for software offerings it is more of a hindrance if the systems' vendor is competing in the market than if they don't. Eight years ago Apple had to jump in because lots of vendors were exiting or at least lowering priorities. It is actually the sign of a death spiral market when there are fewer and fewer software vendors over time and the system vendor has to acquire them to prop up the market.
For narrow markets with high priced software it often doesn't pay to be single platform ( where Apple was taking Shake). The customers know they are being tracked into a single vendor setup, which typically just gets worse price wise over time.
4. Most of their revenues are generated by i type of products. To maintain their momentum and competitiveness in the phone and personal product line, they will need to focus all of their attention on them.
This is yet another one of those emperor wears no clothes memes that are floating around. The mac line was never heavily skewed to the upper end of the line. There was always a primary effort to get out a more personal focused product. And when Apple focused on sky high stuff ( e.g., the $1000-2000 Newtons) they were usually busts.
5. Most serious content development is happening on the "other" platforms such as Linux. Mac is still a player in smaller studios,
Linux? Can see Linux as being dominate in render farms. Mac systems don't really compete as pure computational nodes. What seriously is lacking on Mac OS systems is software where can do the "front end" (user interface , display) on the Mac system and then ship the computational workload out to more heterogeneous (or computationally focused ) boxes.
The notion of putting the cluster in a box to be used by a single person or very small workgroup.... of course that only plays well are small shops.
7. You get far more power for your dollar on PC. Especially if you build it yourself.
If you do it yourself also means you are responsible for support. (chase down individual warranty providers. chase down glitches , etc. etc. )
It isn't really more power, it is you can make far more many tradeoffs in WinPC ecosystem. For example, Trade case , power supply , ease of maintenance for more GHz. If want a completed and suppurted system from a top 8 system vendor then the costs aren't all that dissimilar if comparing equivalent devices. ( not one vendor's mini eco tower to another's top line model, but apples-to-apples comparisons. )
The All-in-one has been taking over the PC market too though. The whole "screwdriver shop" system vendor notion is gradually going away. It has happened much faster on the Mac side since Apple controls it, but there is little to indicate that they are not out in front of a general trend. Perhaps too far in some cases but generally that is where things are going.
