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

Just give me mini modules, which I can connect through TB and it works parallel, and a way to install a decent GPU and I'll be happy. I'll just buy 10 minis for the same price of the top end Mac Pro, that gives 20 cores running parallel and up to 80GB Ram. That'd be cool. :)
 
I rather suspect I'll be rendering from Cinema 4D and After Effects on a shiny iMac next year... What matters to me is render time. And if I can get it from an iMac, that's great. It's a tidy machine and the screen is excellent...
 
maflynn said:
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
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So you are saying that they are not computers ? Like changing their name was more than just a hip move to tie in Brand Recognition ? .....I don't think so.

They are still a Computer group and I really hope they will stay that way.

As far as "Moving Away" from pro Apps. Well, if you are saying that the "Pro's" should also see this ,....well what do you think they will do??

Move away from Apple ! That's right !

So it would be a horrible idea for Apple and I pray you are wrong
 
NAG said:
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.
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I am fine with that. If Apple can create a better system to suit professionals, I am all for it. iMac in other hand is definitely not it due the lack of expandability and AIO solution.
 
iBug2 said:
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.
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Yeah the last two models did too because Intel's mid and high-level processors overlap with the consumer Core i7s being slightly faster than the lowest enthusiast models (2.80GHz iMac and 2.66Ghz Mac Pro in '09, 2.93GHz and 2.80GHz in 2010) - they do cost more per processor of course. Now we have the issue of Intel switching Xeons from coming first to last to contend with too.
 
deconstruct60 said:
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.
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What report are you referring to? They sell more laptops than desktops proportionally today than 10 years ago, that does not mean that the desktop section is shrinking since Mac sales in total are up. Also, at the last key note it was reported that, macbook* and iMacs where becoming the most popular computer in the us. I would think that iMacs would take a larger hit from laptops than Mac Pro since what it offers in terms of processing power and expansion, can't be done with a laptop, unlike the iMac.
 
Bahamut Eos said:
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.
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I think you're over-reacting a tad. You said it yourself, how much productivity are you going to lose completely learning a new workflow (not only switching away from FCP but to Windows). I can understand the FCP X pain. They really should not have axed FCS when FCP X was still in proto-form (it would be like forcing everyone to use OS X v10.0). But just remember, Adobe and Avid have made similar moves in the past (remember when Adobe basically said, "nope, we're not making Premier for OS X anymore"). So best advice is to go with what you originally said, sit back and watch. Make an informed decision and not one out of fear about what Apple may do.
 
iBug2 said:
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.
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It is not just how many. It is how long they squat on the purchases to. For example, if the average Mac Pro tower customers only buys a replacement every 5 years where the iMac or mini owner might every 4 years, then the Mac Pro will realize an even lower sales rate than the total number of users (no matter where in cycle).

It is not all Mac Pro users but there seems to be a non trivial number of Mac Pro users who "overbuy". They buy a Mac Pro when the economics don't back it up. They buy to "future proof" or rationalize in some other way, but the driver is that don't buy more frequently because overspent.

If there has be a large amount of "misplaced" people buying Mac Pros who really aren't in the Mac Pro market ( can't afford $2,400+ boxes to generate revenue). Then the Mac Pro has a big problem. Apple either has to do a better job of finding the people the Mac Pro configuration is targeted to. Or drop out of the market.
 
Well there you go the end of the world has come...

I personally think that Thunderbolt needs to mature a bit first in terms of take up and expansion solutions and there will need for many of a separate thunderbolt box (in an interim form) that needs to be able to take standard PCI cards as everything doesn't and won't come in a thunderbolt package (not yet anyway).

People will have also made investments in the form of expansion cards to their existing mac pros in the form of graphics and other cards. So to have to throw them out before end of life would be ridiculous, but the chance are their mac pro is not yet at end of life either. Having said that any Mac Pro bought today without thunderbolt for a specific task will be fine just the same way as if you bought a PC workstation from HP without Thunderbolt, it will do the job you wanted if it meets the spec you need.

iMacs are great and do an excellent job but lack expandability even with Thunderbolt (at the moment due to the relatively slow take up) so won't be for everyone which is fine. As other have said Apple is the same as any other company which means it is there to make money rather than serve some philanthropic role.

The one sure thing is that there is no future proof solution, as there is always a new this or that which fits that horrible phrase "game changer" and it will always be so. Those making purchasing decisions base them on "will it do what I need to and will there be enough work to have made my money back and then some". Rather than on will it do what I might want it to when the next big thing comes along.

The biggest challenge for apple concerns delivering and publishing road maps for certain products if they want to continue to serve a professional market just as other companies have realised they need to do for their pro products. This obviously goes against apples corporate culture which is to say nothing until it happens which is fine as it works for there main income areas such as phones, tablets and notebooks.

The good news in all this is that there are many, many solutions now, far more than when I started out in design, video and photography some 20 odd years ago and most manufactures make solutions that will work in or with either box wether its apple or PC.

We are at a point were its more about the software and hardware you need to use than the platform its run on (which should be the case for operating systems and the hardware they work on). You only need to look at the iPhone for a great example of this. If you are a corporate user you are more than likely going to select a Microsoft email solution in the form of Exchange server over an apple solution such as Lion or Snow Leopard. This is simply down to the fact that iOS supports push email from exchange and not from any apple server product.
 
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You just need to take a step back and see what is clear here:

1. Apple is constantly moving to simplify its designs and shrink its designs
2. There's still plenty of people who need a mac that has the core 'mac pro' functionality.

So one can deduce from this that Apple is clearly aware that there is a (small) market for pro users, but they also want their next pro mac to fit better into their product matrix.

One can assume that they're working on something new that will replace the mac pro, possibly keep its same name that is smaller, quiet, and still powerful. I am pretty confident that Apple is going to make use of Thunderbolt as a means to add expansion cards and accessories to the new Mac Pro rather than making a huge tower that takes up space when in many cases the PCI slots remain empty bar 1 or 2 GPU's. I'd assume that they will make sure they can still fit a full power GPU - wether they modify the shape/design of the card to fit it into smaller dimensions remains to be seen. If they go with a Mac Mini styled enclosure, albeit taller, then a full-length GPU would need to be modified to fit inside the enclosure. I could see Apple moving to all SSD with 4 - 8 internal SSD bays which would take up very little space - heck you can fit two SSDs in a Mac Mini already, which is pretty impressive.

I absolutely do NOT see Apple moving AWAY from the high core-count XEON cpu architecture given all the time and effort Apple have gone to to build Grand Central Dispatch and promote lots of cores. I DO see Apple trying to find ways to take the next steps in shrinking the technology and embracing new architecture such as SSDs and Thunderbolt.
 
gugy said:
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?
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We know that Apple has been selling the Mac Pro's by 5 digit numbers (at most, it may be 4 digit even) annually, yet they sold around 4.5 million desktop macs in 2011. So Mac Pro sales are around 0.1% of all desktop sales. I'm assuming a considerable portion of desktops go to professionals since people prefer laptops for casual use, the Mac Pro user base would be very small in the entire professional market.

Obviously this is based on the assumption that most desktop buyers use it for work.
 
*LTD* said:
Then it looks like you'll be looking someplace else.
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Oh !

A little Snarky and dismissive of everything I just explained to you !

I DON"T believe I will be looking some place else.

I believe you like to twist arguments and cause a fuss just for the sake of it.

There is a word for that ....Hmmmm.....It starts with a Tr***.....Ah .. I'll think of it later.

I also would like to see you put some real money down on a bet and but it where your mouth is BECAUSE YOU KNOW YOU ARE WRONG ! ! !


Oh Yeah !

Troll !

Thats the word ;)




It aint gonna happen dude !
 
I can see this happening, considering the ThunderBolt push and MBAir and iMac mention in Tim Cooks last keynote. Made no mention of MacPro and more of :apple: consumers and prosumer are moving towards the iDevices and portables. The end of the MacPro is coming, similar to the XServe.
 
wikus said:
Some people use iPhones to produce graphic solutions for advertising, branding and marketing? I didnt know this. Can you point me to a link where I can buy such a device that will replace my Mac Pro?
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Yeah, because the only jobs on the planet relate to advertising, branding and marketing. :rolleyes:

Not to mention those aren't very good examples of why you need a Mac Pro.

wiz329 said:
I believe the current imac can only handle 16GB of RAM.
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No, 32GB.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/iMac
 
iBug2 said:
We know that Apple has been selling the Mac Pro's by 5 digit numbers (at most, it may be 4 digit even) annually, yet they sold around 4.5 million desktop macs in 2011. So Mac Pro sales are around 0.1% of all desktop sales. I'm assuming a considerable portion of desktops go to professionals since people prefer laptops for casual use, the Mac Pro user base would be very small in the entire professional market.

Obviously this is based on the assumption that most desktop buyers use it for work.
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How do we know this?

wiz329 said:
I believe the current imac can only handle 16GB of RAM.
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4x8GB SO-DIMMs.
 
swagi said:
So basically you are advocating people who make their living on their workstations to question their decisions?
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I regularly do.

Don't get me wrong: I personally am all for Apple delivering the fastest Mac computers they can possibly make in keeping their Mac Pro line.
But to get to the business standpoint

swagi said:
but from the main business standpoint I dare to say that it is complete business nonsense to pay for a display that you throw away with every upgrade cycle.
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I beg to differ; I have in fact, repeatedly advised customers of mine to forego the Mac Pro in favor of an iMac this year. And many of them were people who believed they needed "a Mac Pro, nothing less", kept upgrading their old (Mac Pro) machines instead of purchasing a new faster (i)Mac, etc. etc…

I do believe it to absolutely make sense "from a business standpoint" for many of them.
A Mac Pro just currently just isn't a good value proposition in terms of price/performance for many:

"1000$ more for a Mac Pro won't buy you a faster computer".

A current top-end iMac(3.4GHz i7, SSD) offers about the same performance as a 6-core 3.33 Xeon Mac Pro in most applications*. Yet even with its "27" built-in Cinema Display", the iMac costs 1000 USD less than the display-less Mac Pro.

* Slightly more in Photoshop, DTP etc…, and only a bit less for heavily multithreaded encoding/rendering.

And you're not going to make the Mac Pro faster with any upgrades - it's CPU stays the same, greater RAM expandability won't matter, save for only the most exotic applications, external HDs can be added externally via Thunderbolt (if admittedly at a higher price due to the casing/controller needed - yet often still less than a Mac Pro with multiple internal drives - and then, the iMac still has the advantage of including a big display).

So why and where's the iMac supposed to be "nonsense", "from a business standpoint"?
 
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Keep it Apple, there are without a doubt users who need the abilities of the Mac Pro.

If Apple drops this computer they are leaving a HUGE whole in their line up and universities and large businesses are going to have needs that Apple can't meet.

Or set the Mac Pro to a cheaper price, and have people use BTO to get those server grade specs on the Mac Pro, while making the default specs somewhere near the Mac Mini/iMac
 
What I dont understand is why people are so confident on relying on Thunderbolt to fix all the holes with the absence of the Mac Pro.

Given apples incredibly MISERABLE history of giving its consumers choice and even more so when it comes to graphics cards, why would anyone think that there would be offerings in terms of GPU via thunderbolt?

And while were on the topic of thunderbolt, how many products are actually available that use thunderbolt? Has anyone actually seen anything be taken advantage of with the use of thunderbolt?

And since when did thunderbolt become so popular? Last time I checked, USB 3.0 was dominating the market share by a fine margin.

Here's a bold statement: Thunderbolt is and will be their new Firewire.
 
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archipellago said:
Maybe because it's as useless and incorrect as everything else he's ever posted?
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All correct. Because it's in line with market realities. I can't help it if some people find market realities uncomfortable. It's for everyone to come to terms with in their own way.
 
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