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Apple 'Questioning' the Future of its Mac Pro Line?
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Its no coincidence that if Apple consider dropping the Mac Pro, they'll also streamline their laptops to just a single 'MacBook' branding, abet different sizes and guts... Face it - they want to ditch the 'pro' branding simply because the gap between a consumer and pro users are merging all the time, and FCP-X was an example of this. In addition, they don't want to separate consumer and pro users because that affects sales.
My prediction, for all its worth, is that is that the only stand-alone (not inc. the iMac) computers in their future line-up will be Mac Mini's, and the two models will be the current compact version and a 'G4 Cube' inspired model in which the user can easily remove media/components. Such is Apples desperation to ditch optical drives that they really get away with it. They'll also likely ditch Intel chips because of the ridiculous prices, and again focus on their 'A' series chips, although they could spin off a new 'B' series for more performance.
My prediction, for all its worth, is that is that the only stand-alone (not inc. the iMac) computers in their future line-up will be Mac Mini's, and the two models will be the current compact version and a 'G4 Cube' inspired model in which the user can easily remove media/components. Such is Apples desperation to ditch optical drives that they really get away with it. They'll also likely ditch Intel chips because of the ridiculous prices, and again focus on their 'A' series chips, although they could spin off a new 'B' series for more performance.
You know some professional users have to wait on their computer and can't do much else while they do - or choose not to. Hence iMacs not being suitable because they take even longer to process things.
They are completely necessary in order to house high end processors, graphics cards and abundant amounts of memory. The Mac Pro is actually small for a workstation.
Meaningful to who? For entertainment and some productivity. Not for heavy multi-threaded workflows.
I'm all for Apple reexamining what the Mac Pro is supposed to do if it leads to a better product. I understand why they discontinued the XServe (it really was super niche and Mac minis can largely do the same thing). I would not understand discontinuing the Mac Pro though if they do not provide a suitable replacement. While I'd never buy one for personal use I can see where they would be very useful. That being said, I (again) don't automatically believe that the current Mac Pro efficiently addresses the market (for whatever that is worth). I'm saying this because while most Apple products have shifted toward being more accessible to consumers (e.g. Xserve being replaced with Mac minis) the Mac Pro has run away in the other direction. A consumer should never ever think of buying a Mac Pro unless they are doing some serious work. Looking at the Mac mini, it can be a pretty good server and at the same time a consumer isn't making a bad decision when getting one.
Essentially, Apple seems to be shifting toward, buy iOS devices for lightweight use, buy Macintoshes for truck use, buy your heavy iron somewhere else. And honestly, it makes sense (OS X server, while decent, really isn't that great for what it is supposed to do and it never really has been). If Thunderbolt lets them make a high end iMac or Mac mini clusters (with non-laptop chips) I don't really see the huge issue here. Again though, I'm withholding final judgement until we see what Apple is actually doing.
Essentially, Apple seems to be shifting toward, buy iOS devices for lightweight use, buy Macintoshes for truck use, buy your heavy iron somewhere else. And honestly, it makes sense (OS X server, while decent, really isn't that great for what it is supposed to do and it never really has been). If Thunderbolt lets them make a high end iMac or Mac mini clusters (with non-laptop chips) I don't really see the huge issue here. Again though, I'm withholding final judgement until we see what Apple is actually doing.
Apple sells Macs.
Macs are computers (oops, and so are iPads.)
Ergo, Apple is a "real computer company." I don't see how any one can really fake it, LOL.
Pretty sad news. Not unexpected, given their recent trend, but still pretty incredible. And maybe pretty myopic. The benefit Apple has received from professionals who evangelize their products must be substantial.
Still, Apple's never been afraid to kick loyal users to the curb, like they did when they unceremoniously cut off Macworld attendance without so much as a "thanks". And maybe at this point they don't need the pros to sing their praises--they've got plenty of product awareness among consumers and get lots of word of mouth just from consumer devices.
I wonder, though: what new company will step in and win the loyalty of the pros?
Still, Apple's never been afraid to kick loyal users to the curb, like they did when they unceremoniously cut off Macworld attendance without so much as a "thanks". And maybe at this point they don't need the pros to sing their praises--they've got plenty of product awareness among consumers and get lots of word of mouth just from consumer devices.
I wonder, though: what new company will step in and win the loyalty of the pros?
It really can't be.
How could they be considered a real computer company at that point?
The Mac Pro is an Amazing computer. Don't worry. They said this about the iPod too.
They dropped computer from their name a while ago. If a product line is not making the profits they think it should they will drop it. There is a lot of overlap in products now. With Thunderbolt, iMacs have some of the expansion that MacPros have and the CPU is quite powerful.
Apple has shown itself in moving closer to the consumer market and farther from the pro market. Just look at their Pro apps they're being positioned more for the prosumer and consumer then full professionals
Not sure if you took the time to read and comprehend my post in the first place. I never said ALL.
I said lots of people depend on it. Do you see the difference?
While the iMac is a great machine for the reasons I mentioned earlier it's not suitable for ALL people.
I am sure Apple is very aware there is a huge part of the industry that depends on a machine that can be customized to individual needs.
But there's no option for more than 4 cores on an iMac currently or beyond 16 GB of RAM (32/64 GB are options on the Mac Pro aren't they?). I do see your point and agree to a large degree-but I don't think the high end iMacs can replace the Mac Pro yet. Perhaps we'll see 6 and 8 core Mac Pros as standard options with the upgrades to 12 and 16 core available. (So 2 standard Mac Pros compared to the current 3.) And that may fade down to 1 in the future as 6 core becomes as obsolete to professional users as quad core is on the verge of doing so.
However, I don't see any of that for another 2 years minimum...
The current top end iMac beats the lowest end Mac Pro in multi threaded workflows. The only thing iMac can't beat atm is the HD5870 GPU that Mac Pro can have.
That being said, the fastest Mac Pro is close to 3 times as fast as the top end iMac today.
I waited for 10.7.2 to move, as it felt the major overhaul would have its problems.
I have an iMac 21.5 with a 27 theatre display as the primary screen. I have read how full screen basically knocks out any second screen, but seems to me it was introduced to help people with smaller screen space, for instance single screen users. If you don't use it, no difference from Snow Leopard, surely? It is not like anybody has lost screen usage with its introduction, or do I miss something?
Your lots is a very small percentage, maybe less than 1% of the professional base of the Mac. So the question isn't whether there are some people who need a Mac Pro. Obviously there are, I'm one of them. But it comes down to how many and whether that's good business for Apple.
What I said was most people don't need a Mac Pro to do work. I also didn't say "nobody", and you said it was "absurd. Maybe you didn't take time to read what I wrote.
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It is not a popularity contest between other Apple products. It is a popularity contest in the targeted markets. In the workstation space top of the line Macs have generally held their own ( carved out percentages similar to what the other Macs got in their targeted markets. So 4-10% of workstation market would be fine. )
Not. Thunderbolt (TB) as the ability to replace the "causal" ( limited I/O needs) usages for Mac Pro. Need an eSATA card. Need a entry-midrange video/audio capture card. What TB is not going to do is give the Mac Pro 10Gb Ethernet or non-entry level Fibre Channel performance. It isn't a good conduit to GPGPU computation cards. Nor heavy 3D cards.
It will skim off the folks the folks who bought Mac Pro primarily because the might want to expand someday with something they aren't sure of. However, those folks are in the wrong market in the first place. Mac Pro wasn't really targeted to them.
They are only questionably aligned in that unit sales are shrinking ( if reports are accurate) and that is not what Apple is about. It is about unit numbers going up year over year.... not down. Growth is the holy grail there.
The sales weenies are Apple are a bit premature to nix the Mac Pro until they see what the more sensibly configured Mac Pros do in the market once the single package models are not largely saddled with 2 year old tech. It would be surprising right now if the sales were not flat (or falling) with the delays by Intel (where was E3620 & E3640 last year?) , Apple (slow to add hyperthead and NUMA management to the OS. Effective OpenCL is where? etc. ) , and others in delivering components and software to make the Mac Pro shine (a litany of software that is hobbled with single threaded road blocks) .
If they don't sell a tower that I can customize and can configure for my business needs then I will look some place else.
A lot of people have a different opinion as you because their thought process doesn't begin with trying to predict the next move by Apple and being the first cheerleader just so they can be "Right" according to stock price. This is a forum dude. not a pissing contest on semantics .
*LTD* ...........Are you just always looking for a fight or an argument ?
I see you always rubbing everyone the wrong way. If so thats your choice but I don't get it.
I agree that Apple is aware that the Mac Pro serves a very real (and profitable market). I'm not sure they consider the Mac Pro to be the best machine they sell for the job. You know Apple, they love pushing the boundaries.
I work in a post production facility, and while I see how a powered up mac mini paired with thunderbolt "could" work, why would we stick with apple when it's obvious they are no longer interested in our business.
FCPX is offensively lack luster. First I was thinking to sit and watch FCPX for a year to see if they fix it. Now that it's been awhile an nothing has been done, I'm thinking of switching to premiere or avid but still on a mac. But I think we really do need to move to a windows based environment. I've been a mac user my entire life, I honestly don't even know how to use a PC, I'll need to learn from pretty much scratch, but I'm not really seeing an alternative.
FCPX is offensively lack luster. First I was thinking to sit and watch FCPX for a year to see if they fix it. Now that it's been awhile an nothing has been done, I'm thinking of switching to premiere or avid but still on a mac. But I think we really do need to move to a windows based environment. I've been a mac user my entire life, I honestly don't even know how to use a PC, I'll need to learn from pretty much scratch, but I'm not really seeing an alternative.
Not having anything more powerful than Intel's mid-level desktops would be sad news yes. That Apple are questioning the future of the Mac Pro isn't sad - more likely to try and come up with a solution to keep it than just drop it dead.
Professionals are already well catered for outside of OS X and Macs with plenty of choice, price competition, excellent levels of support and interaction with those who provide the tools (hardware and software) to a much better degree than Apple are ever going to offer.
The original Cube was Jobs' baby. He described it as the most beautiful bit of hardware Apple ever produced at the time and for some time after. In that sense he may have pushed the Mac Mini and Mac Pro into a single stackable, rackable unit. Just think-a consumer can buy the "Cube" and leave it unexpanded, nice looking (meh, who gives a damn tbh?) and powerful enough for their needs. A pro user could buy one with upgraded processor, graphics etc and add RAID options, extra storage etc etc
Maybe you should follow news more closely. FCPX has been already updated and a crucial feature people wanted has been implemented (XML import/export). And it's only been 4 months since release, so I'd say that's decent progress.
Take his word with very small grain of salt. This is the same guy that defended Pixelmator and put it into the same class as Photoshop for professionals.
I'm a professional, as are my colleagues and clients. Nobody uses anything except for the creative suite and standard file formats that everyone can read and display correctly on... you guessed it, our Mac Pros!
I've got an original Mac Pro (August 2006) that still functions well today. I was hoping to possibly upgrade to the latest version next year--say it ain't so, Apple!
I think it's funny you are saying that less than 1% of Mac based professionals use MacPro. Where are you basing your information from?
I work on the film/video and sometimes audio industry and freelance on several companies in the Los Angeles/NY area. I can say that at least 50% if not more of the machinery used on these studios from small to large ones depend on the MacPro.
I agreed if you that Apple will one keep doing business on the Pro market if they see value on it.