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

[314631]

I hope this news is true. Apple needs to focus on the elegant products like iMac, MacBook Air and iOS devices. These big trucks don't sell anymore.

 

[Bernard SG]

I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying that Apple's vision of the future of computing, even power computing, is mobile.

It'll make a lot of people unhappy, but it's bound to happen, sooner or later.

I'm not sure that it's "Apple's vision". It's just what the market aspires to.

 

[jackc]

Unfortunately the mac pro gives the user choice, and longevity in the product, apple dont like either of these, can only see one outcome.

It's a myth that companies don't like longevity, because they can charge more for a product that lasts long

It's a question of demand for the product

 

[theSeb]

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

You're confused. The classic iPod is still available for sale, at the higher capacities. The lower capacity models were only discontinued after consumers voted with their wallets and stopped buying them in favour of the Touch and nano models.

The white macbook was only axed when the MBA was refreshed for the 3rd time. By the time it was axed, it was no longer a best seller. In fact it was selling in very low numbers and no longer made sense.

Please don't spread misinformation because it's highly annoying.

 

[RichardBeer]

If the Mac Pro was discontinued then it would be the end of the only real desktop that Apple make. If you want good graphics, you'd be effectively shoved out of the mac market. Not that that isn't the case already.

 

[RichardI]

Not profitable? Not profitable?? I have no idea why Apple might want to discontinue the Mac Pro, but "not profitable" is NOT one of them. The Mac Pro is the most powerful single personal computer on the planet - isn't that reason enough to keep making it?

 

[juanm]

I hope this news is true. Apple needs to focus on the elegant products like iMac, MacBook Air and iOS devices. These big trucks don't sell anymore.

They don't sell because they are overpriced/old, so they don't attract customers... If Apple found the right formula to be able to update it often, and keep prices reasonable, they would sell.

 

[vitzr]

1) I hope this news is true.

2) Apple needs to focus on the elegant products like iMac, MacBook Air and iOS devices.

3) These big trucks don't sell anymore.

1a) If you relied on a Mac Pro to make a living you wouldn't.

2a) They already are, where have you been?

3a) Apple has been known to tell the story to meet their goals. I think it's BS.

While many claim "it's only a rumor" one look at the size of this thread & the rapid way it grew reveals the true concern and genuine desire to save the Mac Pro from Apples trigger happy finger.

 

[Abacab]

No ! No ! No!

First the Xserve, I have 3 I get it. You can get an i7 Mac mini With thunderbolt and a Promise Raid for under 3K that's way faster than my Xserve with Fiber that cost 30K .
I know allot of design professionals buying 27" Imacs rather than a Mac Pro Tower.
I think they should keep but re-design.
I have 2 slated for 2012 budjet.

 

[Shivetya]

I would not mind a new smaller Mac Pro, even one using many components from the non server realm. If they want to liven the sales numbers of this system up they need to hit far lower starting price points. There is no reason why a Mac Pro cannot start at around 1500 while employing desktop memory options and processors.

As for external storage, with TBOLT you can have a stack right next to you with good options to expand (I have not seen the docs to know what the maximum number of drives is). Give me a tower half the current height and weight.

 

[SilentCrs]

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First the Xserve, I have 3 I get it. You can get an i7 Mac mini With thunderbolt and a Promise Raid for under 3K that's way faster than my Xserve with Fiber that cost 30K .
I know allot of design professionals buying 27" Imacs rather than a Mac Pro Tower.
I think they should keep but re-design.
I have 2 slated for 2012 budjet.

How do you even have a budget if you can't spell the word?...

 

[carlemil]

People need the exclusive features of the Mac Pro.
Let's hope it's not true.

Professional color grading needs internal express cards
Pro Tools HD systems needs it as well.

Thunderbolt won't do that, not yet anyway.

The expandable features of the Mac pro is essential for the pro community.

We considered changing our post production suites to iMac, because of the late update of Mac pro, but the hardware systems we used woudnt be compatible with anything but the Mac Pro. For post production, it's either Mac Pro or a custom linux.

No one wants the latter.

 

[Umbongo]

While many claim "it's only a rumor" one look at the size of this thread & the rapid way it grew reveals the true concern and genuine desire to save the Mac Pro from Apples trigger happy finger.

Yes, but many people will ignore the fact that Apple are reliant on Intel's workstation schedule and the next generation of that hasn't come out yet. So they can easily believe there is no new Mac Pro because there never will be as they are used to updates coming for other Macs within a year. The Mac Pro is typically more than a year between major revisions.

There should be concern of course and I would expect Apple to be questioning the Mac Pro. Although I don't put much stock in this sort of reporting, its a mishmash of anecdotes from "sources" from a site that doesn't really have that great a success rate for their own internal reporting.

Mac Pros have longevity, obviously they carry on from the G5 days, but they have only been out 5 years. How many 2006 owners are ready to upgrade though? From 2009 the Mac pro models came with a lot less value for your dollar, notebooks became more popular and powerful and iMacs moved from 2 cores and a 4GB ram limit to quad core with hyper-threading and 16GB memory support (now 32GB) and went from mid-range graphics to (low) high-end. All of that surely contributes to lower sales. Hopefully Apple find a solution to the issue rather than kicking professionals and high-end developers to the curb.

 

[seveej]

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You cannot be serious - the iMac's are good but they are way slower than the mac pro and no way to upgrade them. so is 25% of mac sales not good enough.

This would be the death of the mac as we know it.

Sure you can. Buy a new iMac, sell your previous (for a surprisingly good price), download all your data and settings from your time machine backup (or the cloud). It's a wham, and often easier than seriously upgrading a wintel workstation.

My only gripe with the i7 iMac was updating storage. Now, with thunderbolt even that became a non-issue.

 

[carlemil]

I think a lot of people are withholding buying af Mac Pro, because the wait for an update. Myself included. It's not weird if the Mac pro hasn't sold well the last couple of quarters, people who buy the pro machines, know that the pro is old and an update (hopefully) is imminent as soon as Intel has their chips ready.

 

[KnightWRX]

Do you have some sort of indicator for this assertion? Designing a hardware box these days is really not rocket science and even though the current MacPro design has been around for a while, there's no technical reason it needs to be scrapped.

The back up is in the AppleInsider piece. And design ? Why look only at design ? There's more fixed costs than just throwing parts together and sending off a spec to manufacturing.

Employee training, marketing, inventory allotments, sales material, are all fixed costs that are divided amongst units shipped. Sometime, the volume will drop low enough that the margins after per-unit cost is removed can't pad the fixed costs enough anymore, and you drop the line as "non-profitable" even though you're probably still making a profit on a per-unit basis just because the time and ressources alotted to model can be better used on more profitable ventures.

----------

Remember when Apple put the Cube "on ice"? Time to set your microwaves to defrost!

No, I don't. The cube became the Mini.

 

[MorphingDragon]

No, I don't. The cube became the Mini.

The cube became the Mini?

I thought they became Hipster goldfish bowls.

 

[paulvee]

probably like throwing a piece of paper into the void, but I just sent an email to tcook@apple.com to register my earnest hope that they don't discontinue this product.

as a filmmaker/photographer/musician, it would be a massive loss of my main production tool.

 

[Frixo Cool]

Killing a pro segment is a nightmare scenario, HP did the same once and now they are on their knees. It is just like a killing the brain of a brand. That can't be a happy scenario long term. Halo effect that Mac Pro has and the whole pro community should be worth far more than a profit margin.

I hope this is not true and that what is really happening is that Apple is doing a new concept and form factor for a pro Mac.

They should make a new Mac Cube! Something like long lost NeXT Cube.

Mac Cube for pros should be like this...

Features and tech specs:

- the main feature is an aluminum unibody cube case (think of it like Apple Design Award scaled up) that is also an enormous cooler - a board with Xeons is mounted directly into it, in an ideal case there will be no fans at all,

- the idea is not to make it as compact as possible, but impressive, silent and powerful, an icon!

- Mac Cube as a product is positioned above hi-end iMac, but below Mac Pro tower - or as a Mac Pro tower replacement. It's a powerful machine for multimedia studios and computer enthusiasts,

- no optical drive! It has no sense anymore even in multimedia studios, DVD production is going down, and Blu-ray is probably a dead-end, so who needs an optical drive he can use an external one... not a big deal,

- only 2 (or at most 3) PCI-Express slots, one for graphics card and one(two) for expansion,

- 8 or at least 4 memory slots,

- SSD boot drive built-in (but not soldered!), 128GB should be enough in low-end model,

- four 3.5" HDD drive bays for the ultimate storage capacity (with available adapters for 2.5" SSD)

- last, but not least: a hi-end graphics card available.

 

[SVegard]

The last months there have been a lot of iBoys sitting here shouting out loud that they want Apple to kill pro products...some of them in this topic as well.

I will turn it. I hope Apple fails as a "consumers products" company. That it is all about hype and fashion. That people start to see tablets for what they are, that the iPhone gets knocked down by other brands...and the upcomming TV ends up with a big LOL. How about that?


And btw. Off topic but I will say it anyways. OSX LION is a ****ing piece of ****!

 

[wyrmintheapple]

It occurs to me that apple could deal instantly with the issues of all "pro" customers and server makers by simply making an Apple branded ATX motherboard, one which contains all the TPM, EFI and such for Mac OS X installation and also contains the basics in terms of supported hardware for that Mac "it just works" feeling.... They could make it quite expensive, so they'll still make their money on just the board. They could make it so you had to buy it with Mac OS X, further cash being made. Then they have a product that can simply fill any niche they can't be bothered building a nice computer for. The markup on the board would mean the imac is better value, comes complete, nice design etc, but would still allow them to cover and even test market viability in the future.

Apple does in many ways run the risk of pulling out of markets that they might need in the future. Pretty soon if you want a real computer, you'll have to buy Windows and with the improvements that Windows 7 brought, that's not even a bad prospect anymore.

 

[KnightWRX]

Then you simply do not know what you are talking about as the other poster stated to the prior post you responded to. You too need a LOT better education before speaking on the subject here. When you state "Computing power increases faster than software can keep up." that is a totally false statement.

For people like myself that are professional 3D artists, the software not only has kept up but is often so cutting edge that the hardware does not. Programs such as C4D, Maya, Vue, etc. can take FULL advantage of everything you throw at it and use as much power as you have available. See my other post about how I use the Mac Pro, not just one, but several as part of a "render farm" as "nodes". I can use as much power as currently available to buy and then some and it never stops for me.

You're telling me I don't know what I'm talking about when obviously you don't understand the meaning of the word "niche". 😉 Awesome.

3D artists are a rare breed. For each 3D artists, there's 10s of thousands of others who don't need the power of the Mac Pro. Also, as hardware advances, software "in most areas" can't keep up, meaning the niche of people who require the latest Mac Pro diminishes over time.

Then there's competition, not all 3D artists work on Macs. Some use PCs. Ask SGI about how 3D artists are profitable. Remember Octanes ? SGI used to be THE workstation manufacturer for the industry you claim to be a part of . Now they are barely a blip on the radar, making generic boxes and supercomputers (after the acquisition of Cray).

No, I know perfectly what I'm talking about. Again, never stated that your needs don't exist, just that your niche is dwindling.

 

[watakoola]

Lots of posts!

When I first found this thread this morning there were 50 posts - now over 12 hours later there are 960+ replies.

Looks like we Mac Tower lovers are a vocal lot, and are sending a message to all who will listen that we want/need the towers to continue. I hope Apple is listening!

All you folk who reckon iMacs and Minis are better - well, that's your opinion. I know what I want and need - expansion, hard drives, longevity. Yes, I know Thunderbolt will be great, but I don't want multiple boxes daisy-chained to get what I get now in a tower.

I love my iPad and my iPod Touch, but they and iOS will never replace the flexibility of a tower.

My aging PowerPC Dual Processor, water cooled G5 is manfully soldering on after many years service in a working environment, and I've waited over a year or so for a new Mac Pro to make the transition to Intel. I'm happy to wait a few months more, and have never felt the need to go with an iMac instead, even though they are a great machine.

Hopefully Apple is 'killing' off the Mac Pro and replacing it with a replacement tower - not an all in one or mini device.

Keep posting folks!

 

[Wanted797]

I sure hope this isn't happening, for my Uni work in film I use to the Mac Pro's as they are the only ones powerful enough to handle hundres of GB's of HD video the iMacs simply don't cut it. I hope they keep them.

 

[vitzr]

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Sure you can. Buy a new iMac, sell your previous (for a surprisingly good price), download all your data and settings from your time machine backup (or the cloud). It's a wham, and often easier than seriously upgrading a wintel workstation.

My only gripe with the i7 iMac was updating storage. Now, with thunderbolt even that became a non-issue.

I don't want, nor will I ever use, an all in one.