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

MacFanJeff said:
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.
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KnightWRX said:
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.........
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Er.... I don't think he questioned whether you knew the meaning of the term "niche" mate. Nor whether the line was profitable. His post there was referring to your comment of "Computing power increases faster than software can keep up.". You were wrong there. Sorry, you just were. Nobody is questioning the validity of anything else you said, and you made some good points, so don't ruin your image by reinforcing a point nobody disagreed with as some kind of evidence that you were right about everything. You weren't. Admit defeat. Gracefully.
 
just release a mid tower i7 desktop and call it Mac. srsly how hard can it be.
 
Renzatic said:
Generally, yeah. But not for the 3D/movie market. They're the one segment that's always be on the cutting edge of computer tech, to the point where they'll actually future proof their products to take advantage of computer tech that isn't even currently feasible.
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Sure, but as hardware advances, more and more tasks can be accomplished with less hardware and it makes more and more sense to revert to a "dumb" terminal model where intensive tasks are pushed to render farms and other high-performance clusters.

The Mac Pro niche is getting smaller as more stuff is moved on to the network. Storage ? It used to be internal RAID storage. Then it became SAN based storage over FC. Now iSCSI over 10GE is making sense.

This means that people that actually "need" the Mac Pro are less and less important in the balance of things. So sure, there are people that do out there, no one is denying that and I don't know why people here feel the need to remind others they exist, we know tyvm. But the thing is, there's less and less people that do.
 
Ok i had written a full 3 pages essay on why the mac pro had to be developed and how the potential market is not that small but it got lost while sending, so let's just say that killing the mac pro is nuts and anybody who babbles about stackable minis or glueable imacs or whatever must have never seen a pro at work in his whole life...
Apple, go back to build real professional machines and give them a serious support service like you did in the first 2000s, and I bet those 5-700.000 mac pros a year will be a nice niche (sorry) and will overpay for their own developement...
 
wyrmintheapple said:
Er.... I don't think he questioned whether you knew the meaning of the term "niche" mate. Nor whether the line was profitable. His post there was referring to your comment of "Computing power increases faster than software can keep up.". You were wrong there. Sorry, you just were. Nobody is questioning the validity of anything else you said, and you made some good points, so don't ruin your image by reinforcing a point nobody disagreed with as some kind of evidence that you were right about everything. You weren't. Admit defeat. Gracefully.
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I'm not wrong. Before, you need a "Mac Pro" to run all types of software. That need is becoming less and less as more and more category of software can be run on lesser hardware since it can't keep up. There will even come a time when video editing and 3D modelling will be able to be done on lesser machines. Now maybe not, but in the future it will.

As hardware keeps growing exponentially, more and more tasks can be done on lesser machines. That's a plain fact. I didn't say "All software can't keep up", I was talking software in general.

Tell me I'm wrong now.
 
My MacBook Pro with 16GB of ram and 500GB SSD, 30 Inch Display, and thunderbolt says to me, I don’t need no Mac Pro... sad for those who need it though because I could see Apple dropping it at some point... :mad::(
 
Apple must realize that mid-tower Mac will be very popular and could replace the Mac Pro. It would kill sales of the iMac and people would have a better desktop Mac at the same time.
 
jorgo said:
Ok i had written a full 3 pages essay on why the mac pro had to be developed and how the potential market is not that small but it got lost while sending, so let's just say that killing the mac pro is nuts and anybody who babbles about stackable minis or glueable imacs or whatever must have never seen a pro at work in his whole life...
Apple, go back to build real professional machines and give them a serious support service like you did in the first 2000s, and I bet those 5-700.000 mac pros a year will be a nice niche (sorry) and will overpay for their own developement...
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Xserve is a bad precedent here. No matter how much people kick and whine, Apple does what Apple thinks is best for their bottom line in the end, even if it means exiting a market they used to have a presence in.

People need to stop focusing on their needs and need to start looking at it from the perspective of Apple. Does Apple need the profits from the Mac Pro ? Did Apple need the profits from the XServe ? Reflect on that. The day that ressources spent on the Mac Pro can be diverted to more profitable product lines is probably the day the Mac Pro will join the Xserve and with Apple, your warning will be exactly 0 days.
 
jorgo said:
how the potential market is not that small
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That's the problem, potential market and actual market and intertwined in that is apple's direction towards the consumer segment. They are moving closer to the consumer type stuff and away from the professional market.

just look at their pro-apps, they're getting features that don't help a professional but do help consumers.

Regardless of what potential market the MacPro has in front of it, they're not selling in the volumes that make it worthwhile for apple. They need to cut and run, or rededicate themselves. Looks like they're leaning to cutting and running
 
Typically, those Mac Pros last for over 5 years or more. Professionals don't tend to replace Macs as quick as consumers. Maybe as a professional you should look in the mirror and realize you killed the Mac Pro by not voting with your wallet.
 
Mac Pro

I love the Mac Pro. However, even high end graphics and video production companies are getting it done with decked-out iMacs and Mac Book Pros. Demand has dropped so low that Apple *has* to consider discontinuing the line. It's just basic economics.

I will be sad to see the Mac Pro go.

However, if Apple chooses to delay the decision to ax the Mac Pro until say Q3 2013, a more conservative, business friendly President could theoretically engage prosperity plans that could reverse the trend.

This move to cheaper Macs may simply be a sign of the financial times, and not an indication of true demand.
 
maflynn said:
Regardless of what potential market the MacPro has in front of it, they're not selling in the volumes that make it worthwhile for apple. They need to cut and run, or rededicate themselves. Looks like they're leaning to cutting and running
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30" with matte option or even only matte iMac with dual CPUs and GPUs. At least space for two SSDs and two old winchesters.

If Apple made something like that i'd question Mac Pro existence quite seriously, plus it would be produced on existing iMac lines where Mac Pro i'm guessing has it's own production line.

Either way for serious woodoo **** you need render farm anyway.
 
jaedreth said:
I love the Mac Pro.
...
I will be sad to see the Mac Pro go.
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Same here, I've owned Mac Pros for years, back when they were called Power Macs ;)

At some point my needs changed and the fact that laptops go so powerful that I didn't need to drop so much money on a tower. The problem is that the price of MPs have crept up while the price of their competitors have gone down. While Macs have always been more expensive, it made little sense to drop 3k on a machine when an iMac could do nearly the same work for many of the Mac Pro customers.
 
KnightWRX said:
I'm not wrong. Before, you need a "Mac Pro" to run all types of software. That need is becoming less and less as more and more category of software can be run on lesser hardware since it can't keep up. There will even come a time when video editing and 3D modelling will be able to be done on lesser machines. Now maybe not, but in the future it will.

As hardware keeps growing exponentially, more and more tasks can be done on lesser machines. That's a plain fact. I didn't say "All software can't keep up", I was talking software in general.

Tell me I'm wrong now.
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This is actually entirely correct. I don't understand why someone said he was wrong. You didn't see people playing advanced games on cellphones in 2001, did you?! That's an example that hardware is growing faster than software can keep up.

Another example is the fact that we can run pretty intensive programs on laptops today, that just wasn't possible a couple of years ago.

MorphingDragon said:
Why would you restrict yourself?

If the hardware requirements meet, it shouldn't really matter what form factor it is at the end of the day.
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For me, personally, I would never want to send in my entire computer if, say, the screen gets a crack in it(if we take iMac as an example). If the screen breaks, I want to send in the screen, not the entire computer.

Perhaps it's just me :p but I'd rather have the computer separate from the screen.
 
Modular?

I could see stripping out the superdrive bays, all but one hdd bay but making the single remaining bay ssd only, all the pci slots except for one graphics card, and reducing the overall form factor by about half. Then add back stand alone modules via thunderbolt as necessary.

That sort of solution might even make later cpu upgrades easier?

But I can't imagine that Apple would kill off the Mac Pro!
 
How can they produce imacs with dual cpu's? Is there a xeon chip that is cool enough to put in an Imac? I7's and i5's cannot be dual cpu'd natively.
 
this is really sad news,if this became the realty...

im waiting for the new MacPro line since my G5 died last month, and im not planing to pay full price for the correct line !!!!

i need a workstation in my studio with all the extra power and pci-e slots!!!
at the moment im working with my MBP, but its not a solution, its strong but it will never replace a real workstation, and i need to re-build my studio if i want to connect everything - this cost a lot...

the imac is not an option... dont need all in one mac's that i cant expand... and the MacMini, its a MBP power in a small box... even with thunderbolt option, it will cost me in the end like MacPro minus the power....

so if they will drop the MacPro line, looks like i will build an HACKINTOSH machine... as much as i hate this idea.... :(
 
Some people can not seem to think outside their own little world.

Let me speak for all (99%+) pros on this one- NO ALL IN ONES.

While I realize I have no authority to speak for everyone, enough of them will agree as to not argue with me ;)

Imagine, for a moment, you are working in a recording studio. You have sitting all around you: monitors (speakers) and likely more than one pair, probably more than one display, a mixing board or other controller, maybe a MIDI keyboard, your Mac keyboard, racks of effects/synths/audio I/O...

Do you really want another effing external box for all the stuff that was normally housed INSIDE your Mac Pro? Hell no!
 
Great....

I have two MP's in house with 4 displays on each of them. Including several 30 Inchers.

Any way to do that without MP? No.

Scrap Mac Pro and I guess our money will go into good Hackintoshes instead of Apple HW.
 
Can't see Apple's own design department modeling and rendering products on a macbook. Not in this decade, at least. Can't imagine them working on a Windows machine either. I'm sure they can't afford making Mac Pros by hand just for themselves either.

As long as they need to use Mac Pro themselves, it will be available for consumers. IMO.
 
Before abandoning the line altogether, would Apple not be better off reducing the price of the Mac Pro first?
 
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