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

[revelated]

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

Ah, the sheer number of people who said I was crazy when I said not long ago that Apple was going to do this.

I said before. I say it again. They don't really care about power computing users. It's all about iOS now. And that focus is going to prove catastrophic for them...as it (almost) did HP.

 

[dndlnx]

There's also the issue of people (namely professionals) not being able to use their own screens. There are people who use multiple thousand dollar, super accurate monitors that have to be calibrated etc.

I don't think they're going to be plugging their Mac Mini into these things.

 

[yoak]

I do understand people get emotional about this (my self included) because it means that if I have to move to windows for my workhorse, I will have to move my laptop use there as well as it would be too much hassle syncing and keeping to different OSs going.
I'm sure windows is a capable OS, but I just don't like the look of it or how you seems to have to maintain PCs.

And all the software that has to be re bought or replaced! Just thinking about it makes me cringe

 

[Evanrude]

Psssh. Apple would be making a massive mistake if they killed off the Mac Pro. Sales are DOWN on it only because it has not been updated in so long.

But let me play devil's advocate for a moment. In desperate need of a Mac Pro, I *almost* built my own. But have decided to wait to see what Apple decides to do.

Sure, it's not legit, but you could *cough*, hypothetically build a Hack-Pro for around $1500 that has MORE power than the $5K Mac Pro.

I would definitely prefer a Mac Pro. Took me a few years to switch to Mac's from Window's computers. But I love how easy the Mac Pro's are to swap parts on. Install new drives, etc.

When they mention the fact that they could upgrade the power of an iMac for the power hungry users... yah, that won't happen.

My 3-year-old 24" Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06ghz iMac, with a Geforce 8800 GS video card, runs so hot, that they have had to replace the LCD panel (due to image persistence) 2-3 times, and the video card due to overheating, twice. An iMac isn't, and never will be an industry-grade system for doing video editing or graphics on.

Not to mention, the cost of a high-end iMac (27", 2tb hd, 2gb video, 8gb ram) is almost $3,000. Add to that, the cost of adding any external thunderbolt cases, add-ons, and you'd be better OFF, buying a Mac Pro.

Just my two cents.

Either Apple comes out with a new Mac Pro, or I build one.

I wish I'd never sold my quad Xeon to buy this iMac >_<

 

[wonderspark]

I do understand people get emotional about this (my self included) because it means that if I have to move to windows for my workhorse, I will have to move my laptop use there as well as it would be too much hassle syncing and keeping to different OSs going.
I'm sure windows is a capable OS, but I just don't like the look of it or how you seems to have to maintain PCs.

And all the software that has to be re bought or replaced! Just thinking about it makes me cringe

PCs are just as easy to maintain as Macs, and cheaper to build for that matter. I don't even use any virus software on my PCs. (I also don't bother with porn, though.) The Windows OS is the same as OSX more or less. I go back and forth without any problems. No big whoop.

 

[NickFalk]

I think It’s easy to see the reasoning behind the idea of scrapping the Mac Pro: Jobs himself was a strong believer in changing the company in order to survive. Apple are now making most of their money from prosumers and casual users.

It's a bit unfair to use the Mac Pro's week selling figures against it at this time though, as it is just not particularly competitive this far into its life-span. Also: While it might make sense here and now to retire this Pro line it would send a strong SIGNAL to the world indicating that Apple now longer caters to anyone using their computers professionally. That might not worry Apple in this time and place but if they burn this bridge I think it will be gone for eternity.

The main difference between the pro- and consumer markets is that the latter is a lot more flexible while the former requires stability. Pro's need to know that they'll be able to upgrade their workstations down the line.

As someone else mentioned they could make it easier to combine several minis (or something similar) into clusters, essentially making your own mini-server-farms as you go. This combined with Thunderbolt might mean that Apple is once again thinking out of the box. Who knows perhaps they'll make some übercool system with small "nodes" containing either CPU-power or storage (NAS). While difficult to pull off it would make it easier to serve two markets with the same product-line and if anyone could manage something like this it would have to be Apple...

 

[Demigod Mac]

Really though - want to know my favorite thing about towers? The cooling system! If I want to, I can beat the crap out of a tower and not have to deal with anything other than a slight increase in ambient noise.

iMacs, Mac Minis, and MacBooks all use those damn squirrel cage fans. In comparison: They are noisy, clog up quickly, and do not cool nearly as efficiently. Sure, they make nice pretty thin machines, but being able to do whatever I feel like doing at my desk in comfort is a big deal.

^ THIS. I, too, swallowed the hype about laptops being just as good/powerful as a desktop machine. What an expensive mistake that turned out to be.

People who claim that a Macbook Pro / Mini / iMac is a suitable replacement for a Mac Pro because the processing power is close are missing the point. You can push a Mac Pro hard and it'll keep on trucking along without breaking a sweat. Those other Macs WILL sweat, overheat, and spin up their noisy little fans - a constant reminder that they are literally cooking themselves to death slowly.

Please Apple. Do not abandon the Mac Pro line.
It serves an important place in the post-PC world: for creative professionals and programmers.
We use the Mac Pro to create the content that people enjoy on their iToys. Don't forget that.

 

[Blue Sun]

I guess the writing really is on the wall, however, it is still too early in the piece to dump the Pro entirely.

Until Thunderbolt peripherals pickup, there is still a need for the Mac Pro IMO.

BTW, has anyone emailed Tim yet to see if they can coax a response?

 

[anschelk]

it reminds me of the good old commodore amiga 2000: blown up but great potential - and in the end mismanagement. though commodore had no iToy and the amiga died.

here we are decades later with a blown up mac pro, great potential for all creative pros but in the end the market is so small and if apple won't change the design and the usability for this kind of highend machine to reach new markets, the mac pro will die for sure.

back in the days i loved my amiga 2000. nowadays i'm very conftable with my mac pro but beeing a creative pro i want to move on - i'd love to go for a new mac pro by the end of the year. let's see what apple's doing.

probably it will be kind of the same it happened to the apple screen. i can't go with the new glossy one (i have my mac book pro glossy and that's enough mirroring and apple did not care about haveing a stand alone screen without the glossy-glas. kind of the same with finalcut ... xserve raid ... xserve ...

it's hard to think about a windows machine and i do not want one. but i think apple goes it's way, it's highway to consumers-only.

we'll see. there is hope ... a little ...

 

[InuNacho]

Please Mac Pro don't go away yet!
Hopefully when the 2012 one comes out I can finally get a cheapish 2009 and upgrade the hell out of it.

 

[miles01110]

The Mac Pro is clearly not profitable in proportion to Apple's other lines. If sales are trending downward and Apple is unwilling to provide the levels of support required for professional machines, it's just as well that they kill it. They're never going to make enough money off of the Mac Pros to justify the resources required to keep the product line going.

 

[clibinarius]

Never will happen. If graphic design designs to eschew Apple, that's a reverse halo effect. People use Apple not just because iOS but because professionals still like it. Even though sales are low, the notion of every serious artist having a mac is something worth it even if the Mac Pro was a loss-which it isn't.

Also you have to consider that if Linux does everything and just works for people, there's less reason to buy a Mac in the end, which "Just works"

Fear not, I don't see any logical reason to drop the Pro line any time soon. For one thing, I'm sure Apple's engineers-Johnny Ive in particular-will still use them to figure things out. Unless Apple believes its top brass should be using Windows Machines at home or wants to give everyone custom machines-ain't happening.

As long as a PC market exists, so will the Mac Pro.

 

[Kaji]

^ THIS. I, too, swallowed the hype about laptops being just as good/powerful as a desktop machine. What an expensive mistake that turned out to be.

People who claim that a Macbook Pro / Mini / iMac is a suitable replacement for a Mac Pro because the processing power is close are missing the point. You can push a Mac Pro hard and it'll keep on trucking along without breaking a sweat. Those other Macs WILL sweat, overheat, and spin up their noisy little fans - a constant reminder that they are literally cooking themselves to death slowly.

Please Apple. Do not abandon the Mac Pro line.
It serves an important place in the post-PC world: for creative professionals and programmers.
We use the Mac Pro to create the content that people enjoy on their iToys. Don't forget that.

Amen.

At one point I had come to the conclusion all I needed anymore was a laptop, and did all of my work on it. 4 burnt-out laptop CPUs later, I've decided what I want is an honest to God workhorse for my serious editing projects and for batch processing conversions. I'm still running my G5 tower I picked up in May 2005, which has been running round-the-clock as a server for most of its life, and am just now getting around to upgrading due to the forced EOL and wanting to take advantage of the upcoming features TB is bringing with it. I've been using Macs for 20 years and don't want to switch, but going the iMac or Mini route is 100% off the table.

As far as current laptops go, my track record of having burned out 2 MBPs in the time I've had the G5 aside, I've found that almost everything I wanted the laptop for I can do on my iPad, and the rest I do on my workhorse (indeed, some of it is better done there anyway). Factor in not liking the ultrathin, feel-like-I'll-break-it design of the Air, plan remains set.

 

[theSeb]

Psssh. Apple would be making a massive mistake if they killed off the Mac Pro. Sales are DOWN on it only because it has not been updated in so long.

But let me play devil's advocate for a moment. In desperate need of a Mac Pro, I *almost* built my own. But have decided to wait to see what Apple decides to do.

Sure, it's not legit, but you could *cough*, hypothetically build a Hack-Pro for around $1500 that has MORE power than the $5K Mac Pro.

No, you can't. You are confused. Care to elaborate on what you would put into this $1500 computer?

 

[Nostromo]

We can whine all we want, but fewer and fewer people are buying desktops. "Apple is giving up on the Mac Pro" -- should it read, "Sufficient numbers of buyers have given up on the Mac Pro" ?

I don't see them axing the line just yet - maybe one more update before concentrating on the other 97% of the computer users.

If someone needs a workstation and says he needs a workstation, what's that to do with whining?

For your personal use you might not need a workstation, but many do need one.

The no-profit argument is pointless. Because if it were as you said, Dell would also close down its workstation production - Dell's not a non-profit company, either.

Often time they do have multiple computers. One work horse (Mac Pro) and a few other computers around to use. When the work horse is tied up with a rendering job they often times work on one of the other computers on another project. Even if they are not rendering having all that extra horse power is great when dealing with huge files that can bring a lot of high end computers to their knees in just working with it much less doing the rendering jobs. These are massive files and extra ram really helps out.

You also forget a great time for rendering to be done is while you sleep at night or you are going away for a little while. Something that could do it in say 10 hours compared to something that could take 24+ for the same job. Those 10 hours could be done over night and then next day be ready to go on something else compare to the computer being down for over a day and effecting the next work day heavily as well before you can even review the files.

Also means your dead lines are not as harsh and painful because you have less down time rendering.

I know some engineering software that models one some very high end computers is has been measured in days. A girl I used to date at their office they between 2 employees 6-7 high end computers all tied up doing different models and they still were spending some time doing nothing because they were out of free computers so they took a long lunch while waiting for one of them to finish so they could check the data and start yet another model. This is not counting the ones that crashed and burned.

Exactly. Because many need it.

Maybe Tim Cook deals better with Apple's professional clients iSteve (may he rest in peace) had forgotten about.

It would be unwise for Apple to rely entirely on light users on a consumer level. These people may buy an Apple gadget computer today, but will happily buy A Dell box tomorrow if the deal is right.

Psssh. Apple would be making a massive mistake if they killed off the Mac Pro. Sales are DOWN on it only because it has not been updated in so long.

But let me play devil's advocate for a moment. In desperate need of a Mac Pro, I *almost* built my own. But have decided to wait to see what Apple decides to do.

Sure, it's not legit, but you could *cough*, hypothetically build a Hack-Pro for around $1500 that has MORE power than the $5K Mac Pro.

I would definitely prefer a Mac Pro. Took me a few years to switch to Mac's from Window's computers. But I love how easy the Mac Pro's are to swap parts on. Install new drives, etc.

When they mention the fact that they could upgrade the power of an iMac for the power hungry users... yah, that won't happen.

My 3-year-old 24" Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06ghz iMac, with a Geforce 8800 GS video card, runs so hot, that they have had to replace the LCD panel (due to image persistence) 2-3 times, and the video card due to overheating, twice. An iMac isn't, and never will be an industry-grade system for doing video editing or graphics on.

Not to mention, the cost of a high-end iMac (27", 2tb hd, 2gb video, 8gb ram) is almost $3,000. Add to that, the cost of adding any external thunderbolt cases, add-ons, and you'd be better OFF, buying a Mac Pro.

Either Apple comes out with a new Mac Pro, or I build one.

I wish I'd never sold my quad Xeon to buy this iMac >_<

Exactly. I am on an iMac right now, and it'll be the last one.

I'll never buy an iMac again.

Let's say, the naysayers are right. The unlikely demise of the Mac Pro would mean the rise of the hackintosh.

 

[iPadPublisher]

I Really Hope This Isn't The Case

Rumor, Speculation, Inevitable Truth... whatever you want to call it, I hope this is all 100% *********.

My MacPro has been the single best machine I've ever owned, and while it cost a pretty penny compared to some of the others, I so got my money's worth out of this box and then some. When I'm crunching audio, with Pages, Photoshop and Illustrator open, 12 Firefox tabs, iTunes, an auto-Twitter app and tons of other stuff running in the background, I know I can fire up "one more thing" and it will work all the same. The only sluggishness I had was on startup, and a new OWC SSD drive just took care of all that. Its even so good with RAM, I really didn't need to buy 16GB but did in case I get into video down the road. I've never peaked past 10GB of RAM used. And if I did, it recovered so fast I never saw it.

I know these machines aren't for everyone, but to see Apple totally abandon the high-end would be depressing. Its not like we can buy comparable hardware from another vendor and install OSX on it, so its Apple or nobody. That would suck.

Charge me 5% more next time if you have to, so you can make your profit, and I can still rock a screamin' demon at work. At home, my iPad 2 is just fine, thanks.

 

[gpat]

Not going to happen.

 

[iLilana]

this won't happen

That graph is misleading considering overall sales have gone up. The only reason Mpro sales might be down is lack of updates. It will be interesting to see what they do if a redesign happens. I predict smaller case designs with thunderbolt up the wazzoo. allowing for external vid cards etc.

 

[irobot2003]

Ok, I just ran the comparison... I was interested in a dual processor system, and at the time I looked (2009 & 2010) the Mac Pros were about $500-$1000 cheaper, I finally bought a refurb dual 6-core Mac Pro in 2010.

Looks like within the past year Dell has dropped their prices (to compete with Apple?!), and currently is running a "discount". Current pricing comparison is below.

Mac Pro: $5,248.00
Dell T7500: $5,514 - $805 discount = $4,709
​

Mac Pro config:

Dual 2.66GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon X5650
6GB (6X1GB) 1333MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive, 32MB cache
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB graphics card
18x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Apple Care
8 memory slots
4 Hard drive bays
​

Dell T7500 config is the same as Mac Pro except:

ATI FirePro V4800 1GB graphics card
16X DVD+/-RW
12 memory slots
5 Hard drive bays
​

When I originally did the comparison in 2009, Dell was using drives with smaller caches. The graphics cards are roughly comparable in price. The Radeon has better texture and shader performance, but lacks the double precision floating point of the FirePro.

I've run the comparisons, and if they truly are proper comparisons, the price differences are significant on the SP systems, as the difference was ~$1k USD more for the SP MP (SP MP vs. Dell T3500, and DP MP vs. Dell T5500). Not nearly as much (just a couple hundred) between the DP systems.

 

[Bernard SG]

They killed an iPod when it was a hot seller, cant remember which one. The White Macbook was their best seller, they axed that.

Which iPod? The whole line-up is all still there. The White MacBook had already fallen from grace for a while when it was axed. The MBP 13" used to be the best seller when the MacBook was discontinued (and replaced by the MBA 11" at its price-point), not mentioning the issue of the MB plastic case not aging very well and tarnishing the Mac brand image of rock solid build and quality.

They gained some share, which I think is some of the ipod/ipad halo effect and now people that used windows for a long time have this fresh new OS, but I think they will tire eventually and not want to pay those high prices. I said this in another thread, lets say Apple had the SAME exact line as Dell. The products had the Apple lustre to them and were designed by Apple. Where do you think their share would be???

You're so lucky, being able to predict the future...

I mean god forbid the margins would not be as high, be hard to sleep worrying about people with $$$ maybe not making enough on their stocks. You say its impossible for them to double production?? They spoon feed people BS to retort and the RDF continues. No other company has these imaginary problems.

PS: nice avatar

Apple has actually quadrupled their Mac shipments in 6 years, which is quite something (and I don't know of any significant computer company that ever experienced such growth). What I meant is that it takes time to ramp-up production when you have a spike in demand. Apple gear is not like half-empty plastic boxes where you randomly stuff components; just look how seasoned tinkerers have a hard time to replace stuff inside an iMac, and I'm not even mentioning the supply for displays or those aluminium cases.

It's expectable that the Mac gets to double-digit global market share by 2013, or even before, considering how their China sales are soaring.

 

[onicon]

Would sadly be right in line with Apple's 'home-server' OS X 10.7...

 

[kustardking]

If they can come up with an iMac where we can add external processor cores or GPU's or RAM through Thunderbolt, I wouldn't mind.

The Mac Pro doesn't fit into the ecosystem anymore. Or rather, the ecosystem has evolved away from "PC" and "data" to consumer media consumption. You can blame the iPod for starting the schism, but now the valley is too wide. Thunderbolt has brought 90% of the power to the meek side where PCIE slots once provided an advantage for the other. The Mac Pro is the last of the V8s.

That said, I can see a slimmed down Mac Pro, a Mac Maxi really (though that name would get in trouble with the ladies like the iPad did). The Mac Pro could lose 1/3 of its volume by going with high-end non-Xeon CPUs, drop it to 2 or 3 PCIE slots, have a couple of TB ports, 4 RAM slots, and use 2.5" and one 3.5". Basically, iMac but with extra 2.5" drives, +PCIE slots, and no monitor. Pretty straight-forward, and would satisfy the likes of me. The price could also be not-crazy, trading the display panel for better CPU and a more boxy than flat chassis.

 

[theSeb]

I've boughten every tower line for my PROFESSIONAL needs. It's sad that Apple would just stop making them if this holds true. 64GB of memory just doesn't cut it for my line of work.

It's hard to take you and your views seriously as a PROFESSIONAL when you can't even spell "bought".

 

[Truffy]

Back in the day the main benefits to the MacPro were the expansion slots, dual processor, extra hard drives, and dual processors.

Now days with iMacs coming with quad cores, 16 GB of ram, and terrabytes of hard drive space, and thunderbolts ability to add external storage, and an expansion slot chassis; I think this is an obvious move. Add a duel processor option to the iMac and there you go. The only people this will hurt is the people that use Mac OSX Server as the MacPro and MacMini is the only server hardware they currently offer.

Not quite. I agree that the flexibility of the tower is not the differentiator that it once was. Although the ability to add onboard storage is great, the proliferation of cheap DAS solutions makes even that a minor advantage. I prefer onboard storage, because it's tidier, but that's my problem.

The real advantage of the MacPro over the iMac is that you can choose your own monitor. For those of us that want a larger/smaller display, or who don't buy into the glossy-is-great BS, that's a real kicker.

And, yes, I realise that the Mac Mini also offers no display, but Apple would have to do some serious work on its expandability (especially RAM) to make it a viable choice.

One point, that may have been raised already: that graph in the OP is for all desktops. I wonder what the line trends are within that.

 

[cosmos]

Rumor, Speculation, Inevitable Truth... whatever you want to call it, I hope this is all 100% *********.

My MacPro has been the single best machine I've ever owned, and while it cost a pretty penny compared to some of the others, I so got my money's worth out of this box and then some. When I'm crunching audio, with Pages, Photoshop and Illustrator open, 12 Firefox tabs, iTunes, an auto-Twitter app and tons of other stuff running in the background, I know I can fire up "one more thing" and it will work all the same. The only sluggishness I had was on startup, and a new OWC SSD drive just took care of all that. Its even so good with RAM, I really didn't need to buy 16GB but did in case I get into video down the road. I've never peaked past 10GB of RAM used. And if I did, it recovered so fast I never saw it.

I know these machines aren't for everyone, but to see Apple totally abandon the high-end would be depressing. Its not like we can buy comparable hardware from another vendor and install OSX on it, so its Apple or nobody. That would suck.

Charge me 5% more next time if you have to, so you can make your profit, and I can still rock a screamin' demon at work. At home, my iPad 2 is just fine, thanks.

I am almost exactly in your situation. I too could have gone the iMac route or a Mini, but chose the Mac Pro for ease of future upgrades, processing power and internal storage.

I, however, hope for something such as this:

Redesign the Mac Pro to a smaller (possibly convertible by removing legs) case that would easily be rack mountable. Add redundant power supplies and make the total case 3 or 4U in height. This would allow any redesign to be rack mountable in the data center. This new Mac Pro would fill the need by the loss of the xServes that many need. The right convertible case could fill both workstation and server roles.

Maybe this is wishful thinking, but maybe Tim Cook with his enterprise background might green light something along these lines.