Apple 'Questioning' the Future of its Mac Pro Line?

[kromekat]

why people would buy mac pro is beyond me

Thats why you have iMacs and Mac Minis, and the people that NEED the powerful computers have Mac Pros.

 

[subsonix]

If it disappears it will be replaced with something else. I bet they sell more desktops today than in 2001.

 

[kazmac]

While I am not a Pro

I would hate to see the Mac Pro die.

There are many folks out there who need and want the expandability. Throughout the last 15 years I have known several folks who own Mac Pros.

I respect this machine and those who use it. I hope this is not true.

 

[vitzr]

Possibly the worst news after Steve's death.

Let's not blame this move _If_ it happens... on Tim Cook.

Steve has left years of preplanned moves in place. If nothing, Steve was an amazing planner.

This is not something that Apple takes lightly, nor do I as a professional.

I rely heavily on my Mac Pro at work, and the one I covet at home.

This news if true ... causes great concern. I do _not_ want to be forced to migrate to a PC workstation at some point in the future. That thought is dreadful at best.

 

[yoak]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I currently own a 2008 2.8ghz 8-core Mac Pro and my previous computer was a Dual 2.7ghz G5 Powermac. I used these computers for all my video editing, but next time I am getting a 27inch iMac with a Promise thunderbolt raid drive. Why? Because the current iMac trounces my 2008 Mac Pro and the newer Mac Pro just cost way way too much.

Instead of buying a tower every 3-4 years I'm thinking of just buying a new iMac every year and selling the old one on Craigslist. Would be cheaper then getting a 8-core Mac Pro every couple of years and I would always be up to date.

But what about a reference monitor, a graphic card that can render RED files realtime? Just to mention a few things. It can´t be done on an iMac.

 

[Ozric]

R.I.P. Shake, Xserve RAID, Xserve, Final Cut Pro, Color, Soundtrack, Livetype, and now the MacPro.

 

[irobot2003]

The Mac Pros currently are one of the few (only?) price competitive computers that Apple produces, so I'd hate to see them raise the price. I bought a Mac Pro last year... was originally going to get an HP or Dell Linux workstation, but went with the Mac Pro when I checked price on a whim. They are actually a bit less expensive than roughly comparable Dell or HP boxes (with Xeon CPUs, expandable full size towers), and one can dual boot Linux and OS X (or run a VM of course).

Now folks who need/want multi-core high-end CPUs and expandability is no doubt a small market, and I imagine the Mac Pro suffers from the impression that most folks have that Macs are expensive.

I think they probably need to do a little marketing/advertising...

I'd hate to see the Mac Pro go...

They need to make a better computer or lower the price point.

Don't get me wrong it is a terrific machine, but if they want to sell more, something has to change.

 

[derbothaus]

A week ago you were using the same argument to say that Apple would never dream of killing the Mac Pro.

Proof? I maybe said they most likely wont. That is different from "would never dream". No one knows do they? Only that an iMac will not cut it. Not for extended renders or enterprise grade connectivity.

 

[AppliedMicro]

I have a 2007 Mac Pro 1,1 with 3880 graphics, 6TB drive storage space and 16GB memory.

A current iMac would be way faster.
Probably a 2010 would be way faster as well.

My wife told me to just get the Mac Pro, that it would probably last much longer. Boy was she right.

Sure would it last longer - but then, you probably payed double or triple the price.

It's still a current, modern machine, and workhorse, a beast, what have you. It runs Lion without a hitch. Photoshop, InDesign, Aperture and Final Cut like a champ. My wife, meanwhile, is limping along with an Aluminum iMac, which beach balls constantly just running Photoshop on Lion

An "old" aluminum iMac surely runs Adobe apps worse than a comparatively old Mac Pro.
A recent iMac however will be faster than your Mac Pro.

The point of a mac is SIMPLICITY! Who wants 4 TB drives sitting around daisy chained on their desk?! Who wants a bunch of mac minis stacked on top of each other? Ridiculous.

Who want's 4TB of hard drive space anyway?
Virtually nobody.

That's of course slightly exaggerated, but whether you like it or not: Only a tiny (but undoubtedly vocal) minority of Apple's customer base needs 4TB of storage, let alone a Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro going the way of the Xserve wouldn't surprise me at all.
Cause the same is true for the Mac Pro what Steve Jobs said about the Xserve:

"Hardly anyone was buying them."

I can absolutely see Apple retiring the Mac Pro in the near (if not imminent) future. It has the longest release cycle in Apple's lineup and has been the worst Mac in terms of price/performance value for quite some time - unless you absolutely need its expandability. The latter now being available for other Macs via Thunderbolt, too.

I'd expect many "creative professionals" to first scoff at the idea - but then nevertheless move to iMacs, expanding externally, and replacing them more often (but at a lower price point) than previous Mac Pros. The others... Apple won't really care about them, they're making too much money by focusing on mobile devices.

 

[Rocketman]

Apple considers desktops and servers "content creation" systems. Apple is increasingly a content distribution and consumption firm. Their high end systems and software and operating systems are optimized for content creation, but their business model is not. Hackintoshes are only a partially viable solution. What is needed is hang-on value added systems to a Mac "head end". Don't forget the cloud is Apple's high processing requirement future. Relearn client server compute schemes. Hackin-addon box?

Rocketman

 

[Prodo123]

If a product doesn't sell in high enough numbers to gets axed.

The MBA isn't cheaper (at the same $999 price point) and sales volume was worst amoung the Macs (Mac Pro's were commonly rated higher in the oneline Mac store "best sellers" list) than the MBA. It probably still would be last place if not for the $999 model to boost the volume. (because price does matter. )

This contradiction completely undermined your unnecessarily long post.

 

[Chaos123x]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Apple almost completely owns the entire creative pro market (graphic designers, audio engineers, video editors, photographers, etc). Would they really dump all those paying customers because it doesn't make as much money as the itoys

 

[weespeed]

The post you speak of is proving my point. Is no way working pro would have time to write such long comment on silly MR message board. You don't know troll when you see one, no?

Pros are up on trends and know big tower is silly and old fashioned. Is unecessary. iMac beat Mac Pro in all meaningful benchmarks.

Fact.

Finally a rational post.

You just quoted your own post and gave yourself a pat on the back???

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.. Classic, simply classic

 

[GorgonPhone]

The new imacs and mac mini are more than powerful enough and much cheaper .... and that $3500 fro a mac pro will be better spent on a 15 inch mac book pro and a HD cinema screen

 

[macpeach55]

No surprise the Mac Pro line is dying. This machine will look downright silly running Apple's iOS they have planned across all platforms.

One more fiasco like iLion and I iz on to Windows 8.

Fascinating that you state Lion is a Fiasco without stating why it does not work for you. i moved to it from Snow Leopard and after getting used to the differences I am very happy. But it does not suite everyone, of course. so why is it a Fiasco?

 

[wiz329]

I never said it cut it for every person on the planet, I was simply correcting him.

Four hard drive bays are not that many. Chances are a lot of Mac Pro users have external hard drives already making your argument invalid. Thunderbolt is expensive now because it's new technology, new technology is always expensive once it's first introduced.


So that's all you care about? What others think of the products you use?

Some people use iPhone's for work. Some use iPads. Some use Mac Mini's. Some use iMacs.

No, 4 drive bays are not that many. But a lot of pros use that many drives just for boot and every day work. Any sort of RAID and you NEED 4-5 bays. Most external storage is just for archives and/or backups.
Its a pain to have to use TB for stuff your computer uses on a day to day basis. Try sticking in a mixture of HDDs and SSDs into a promise enclosure. Its just so much easier to do this with the expandability that the MP offers. And that's to say nothing of PCI -- its definitely not dead yet! You want to hook everything up -- graphics cards, external storage, GPU, displays -- all via TB. What a mess, first of all, and even 2 TB ports won't support all that bandwidth!
Yes, you are right. THEORETICALLY it could be done. but WHY, when you have a perfectly good system already in the MP that people need and use!

Also, no, i do do care about the rest of Apple's line. I think its great that they have the iphone and the ipad, and that people use them to get work done. I'm just telling you why its a terrible idea to drop the MP line.

 

[iChrist]

Not fact or only fact with lowest 2.8 and 3.2 Quad core Mac Pro's. So badly threaded applications like iTunes is meaningful benchmark? Mac Pro beats iMac with silly stick in PCMark, Cinebench, Geekbench.

iMac beats Mac Pro in single threaded tests that rely on 1 core as Sandy Bridge has a higher turbo ratio to clock to and 5-10% better execution on same single core. You need some education son.

Ha, good one kid. Congrats to you little buddy. Is good you have Mac Pro for video game. But working pros do not use these outdated machines with old chips and graphic cards anymore.

Welcome to 2011. Nice to have you!

 

[carmenodie]

You are a sucker if you fall for this crap! Macrumors is starting to piss me off with their Apple stock, manipulatory speculative write ups.

 

[Winni]

I need a Mac Pro upgrade and a true update of Final Cut Studio, this FCPX is killing me.

This is nothing personal, but I have to say it anyway: Get over it. You belong to an insignificant minority of Apple's customers. The Pro customers WERE keeping Apple alive many years ago, but since the dawn of iOS, that clientele is no longer important for Apple. And that's the end of the fairy tale.

Apple still likes the iMac, MacBook Air, iPhone and iPod customers. Whatever is outside of that spectrum (including the Mini, yes) is no longer a priority. Their business is now with the HOME users that can AFFORD the premium price. Sad but true. And if you don't like it, switch the system.

DISCLAIMER: I just had seven Glenmorangies and a few Glenfiddichs. But I'd tell you the same even if I were totally sober. ;-)

 

[Prodo123]

Newsflash. iMac is IPS.

But looking at all your past posts, I see you intentionally make false statements. What is the word for that??

I was referring to the 21", which is in fact a TN panel.

 

[yoak]

The new imacs and mac mini are more than powerful enough and much cheaper .... and that $3500 fro a mac pro will be better spent on a 15 inch mac book pro and a HD cinema screen

Well, depends what you need from your computer.
A lot of people posting here are obviously not Pros and there for can´t grasp the benefits of a Mac Pro it seems

 

[wiz329]

Fascinating that you state Lion is a Fiasco without stating why it does not work for you. i moved to it from Snow Leopard and are very happy. But it does not suite everyone, of course. so why is it a Fiasco?

I think it was an improvement in a lot of ways, but, at least in my experience, it was far more buggy at release than either leopard or SL. Battery life issues, wifi issues. Much more of a RAM hog.
My biggest beef, though, is how it cripples anyone with multiple monitors who want to use full screen

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Just one more thing to add to the long list of Apple giving the middle finger to pros.

Lets face it Apple does not care about the people who kept them afloat in the dark days.

 

[bearcatrp]

This isn't a rumor. It's pure speculation that has been beaten to death and beyond on the Mac Pro forum.

It's funny reading fanboy denials. Will take a brick in the head to wake up and realize apple has been considering for a little bit, and will probably do it. With Xserve getting cut, FCP X dumbing down, you would think folks would get the message. I'll bet apple will do one more update, the cut it. Apple turned into a consumer company. iToys! It's where the money is at? Glad I already started my transition. Now if apple would double the size of the mini to allow full size hard drives and a decent processor, I would get one in a heart beat!

 

[toddybody]

For goodness sake, give us a prosumer base model (single socket mobo) in a slim mid tower design that accepts any AMD 6xxx series card (6990 being the exception). Price it at 1499, and I'd buy one immediately.

Unfortunately, Apple is moving further and further away from the hardcore fan base. I just want my gaming platform to double as an OSX workstation.