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

[sauer]

Doesn't make sense.

The mac pro might not make as much profit as the other macs because they are expensive and big and most people would rather buy other macs. However, the mac pro represents the best tecnology they have and many professionals that work with video and pictures buy them. If they discontinued the mac pro just like they did with the macbooks it would mean apple doesnt have one of the most powerful computers for professionals and would mean they are not a strong company. It would be a step backward as a company. They will probably not discontinue it, but will do what they are doing right now, take a long time to update them, probably 1 year or more because they do not generate much profit.

 

[krazygoat]

For studios and many professionals it is not just about the box but how it fits into the pipeline. OS X is UNIX so it fits in wonderfully with scripted pipelines. Windows not so much and getting worse. We are doing some testing with Windows 8 for our Solidworks engineer and it is a nightmare. If Apple ditches the professional market that means a switch to Linux and much higher TCO even though Linux is free support and maintenance are much more expensive which is why we actually originally moved from Linux to OS X, even in our server room. I pay more upfront but total cost of ownership over 3 years is way less than Linux and especially Windows was for us.

Security with our clients data is at a paranoid level and while technically A Windows 7 box can be locked down tight a lot of Professional apps for reasons I can never understand require the users to be admins on the box to run well which is not an issue with either OS X or Linux.

From the artists standpoint they don't care much once they are in a program, but most of our artists are also using Photoshop and gimp and CinePaint are not replacements and running Photoshop under Linux is kludgy.

So a Mac Pro running OS X gives you the best of both world. You have a UNIX core that gives you great pipeline integration and and artist friendly UI with access to the apps they want to run plus the poet they need for heavy lifting. Plus you can easily run OS X, Windows, and Linux natively on the same box. It really is the ultimate machine which is why those of us who rely and use them are so passionate about keeping some sort of Pro box, even if it is an aluminum cube or whatever and the iMac Core i7 while a fantastic box that I even purchased for myself and love, is NOT that box, nor is the mini, nor is a Windows box, nor is a Linux box. It would be the end of something truly special and under appreciated except by those of us that use them and understand their benefits.

Unless you rely on Apple exclusive software like FCP and Logic, you can do just fine without a Mac Pro and use a windows machine. The rest of the stuff (3d programs, adobe suite, compositors) run just fine on Windows.

When I'm working in C4d I forget about the OS I'm using until I go to shut down.

 

[derbothaus]

That's the iMac or MBP, not the tower. Those are the products that people see in movies and out everywhere in public with the apple logo on it. My local Apple store didn't even have a pro on display the last time I went. Apple isn't even giving it retail space.

At one of my former jobs, the boss used the budget of replacing one mac pro to get two iMacs instead. That's got to be the story happening all over the place.

afaik: Apple only stocks the Mac Pro at it's flagship stores. Not it's small box Mall Stores. At least here in Seattle. We have 5 stores and only 2 have Mac Pro's.
The rest of them are for iMac's, iPhones, etc.

I have been replacing Macbook Pro's with iMacs. But no one on a Mac Pro is excited about moving to an iMac. Big resistance and not even a discussion worth having. I've got video guys with PCI fibre cards, Aja 3D capture and XSAN to deal with. iMac would be a big fail and many steps backwards. For consumer it is more than fine.

 

[Lestdog]

Not sure its in apples best intrest to give users a legitimate reason to switch to windows. Losing the Mac Pro will do just that. If they are losing money on the MP then I understand but I think there could be some unintended consequences.

I love my MP (my first mac of 3 years). Since that purchase, I now have been throgh 2 macbook pros, 2 iphones, an ipad 2, 3 ipod shuffles, an ipod classic, an airport extreme and accesories.

All this stuff began with my mp, if my workstation has to go windows apple will probabably lose some of my loyalty.

Im just assuming others feel the same way. But who knows

 

[krazygoat]

I am really hoping this is all FUD and it probably is, I really don't see Apple killing of things for Pro users. Steve jobs always loved a cube, the NeXT cube, Pixar Image Computer, G4 cube. I could see him wanting to do a aluminum Cube as one of his last hurrahs.

 

[macsmurf]

For studios and many professionals it is not just about the box but how it fits into the pipeline. OS X is UNIX so it fits in wonderfully with scripted pipelines. Windows not so much and getting worse.

Just out of interest: Why is powershell not an option?

We are doing some testing with Windows 8 for our Solidworks engineer and it is a nightmare. If Apple ditches the professional market that means a switch to Linux and much higher TCO even though Linux is free support and maintenance are much more expensive which is why we actually originally moved from Linux to OS X, even in our server room. I pay more upfront but total cost of ownership over 3 years is way less than Linux and especially Windows was for us.

In your server room as well? And now that the XServe has been cancelled?

Security with our clients data is at a paranoid level and while technically A Windows 7 box can be locked down tight a lot of Professional apps for reasons I can never understand require the users to be admins on the box to run well which is not an issue with either OS X or Linux.

I don't think this is correct. Once the programs are installed the admin rights can safely be dropped. Most companies running windows (that is, most companies) don't give their employees admin rights. At least we don't, unless they're software developers in which case admin rights are given regardless of OS.

From the artists standpoint they don't care much once they are in a program, but most of our artists are also using Photoshop and gimp and CinePaint are not replacements and running Photoshop under Linux is kludgy.

So a Mac Pro running OS X gives you the best of both world. You have a UNIX core that gives you great pipeline integration and and artist friendly UI with access to the apps they want to run plus the poet they need for heavy lifting. Plus you can easily run OS X, Windows, and Linux natively on the same box. It really is the ultimate machine which is why those of us who rely and use them are so passionate about keeping some sort of Pro box, even if it is an aluminum cube or whatever and the iMac Core i7 while a fantastic box that I even purchased for myself and love, is NOT that box, nor is the mini, nor is a Windows box, nor is a Linux box. It would be the end of something truly special and under appreciated except by those of us that use them and understand their benefits.

I consider OS X the sweet spot between Linux and Windows so I totally agree with you but I don't see why that would have any bearing on Apple's decision regarding the viability of the Mac Pro line. In fact, the XServe being EOL'ed from one day to the other should have been a giant hint.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Thinking....

I am hoping there will be a refresh reasonably soon.

The i7 iMacs are a great value but in some ways as powerful as they are they aren't quite powerful enough for certain kinds of things.

My track "Espionage" is something like 150 tracks of 24-bit audio - some of it from softsynths and some of it from recorded audio - a tall order for a lot of computers.

I was sort of forced into an i7 iMac when my previous system disintegrated but some of the things I did on my old aluminum tower were more elaborate and had more i/o bandwidth to handle the large productions I was doing.

How can I describe it: the i7 is fast but it seems more "brittle" it has issues dealing with larger quantity of sustained i/o. The Pros have a "wider river" to accommodate lots of data simultaneously.

Out of necessity my current productions aren't quite as elaborate - I'm hoping I can use my i7 iMac as a display once it eventually gets replaced.

That being said, a lot of the folks harp on a single i7 standalone box and the i7 is nice but it doesn't really have the "beef" necessary to handle some of the things I would do on a regular basis.

With an i7 you cannot set up a dual i7 system - Intel never designed it for that. Apple never released an i7 Extreme edition machine (6 real cores versus 4 on the lower end models of the i7 processor).

So the Xeon becomes a more workhorse processor since you can run multiple of them and indeed if you have an dual eight core machine with hyperthreading you gain quite a lot of additional firepower to your workload.

I still can work with my present setup but the stopgap solution of an i7 imac has its strengths and weaknesses. It sure would be nice to see Apple continue the Pro towers so I can realize what is in my head.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Two things that should probably be discussed before we start making funeral arrangements for the Mac Pro product line:

1. When the Intel transition finally completed with the launch of the 2006 Mac Pro, Apple continued to sell the Power Mac G5 Quad model for those that still relied on PowerPC software for production environments. Last I checked, none of these people are the MacBook Air, iPad, iPhone toting "consumers" and as such, I'm pretty sure that these were solely on sale to appease those in a production environment. So, while I don't doubt that Apple will inevitably stop selling desktop Macs in favor of notebook Macs and iPads, and while I don't doubt that this will happen sooner rather than later, my guess is that the Mac Pro will, somehow, be the last one standing for this exact reason; it offers flexibility found in no other Mac, period.

2. The Article says that Apple is questioning the Mac Pro in ITS CURRENT FORM. Given that we can all agree that the single-processor entry model is overpriced, and that the design is dated (being nearly a decade old), perhaps that means that a revamped next gen Mac Pro might be around the corner instead of a complete axing of the line. Just saying. The wording is vague enough that this is just as much of a possibility.

Let's face it, if you need more than a lower end iMac for any kind of processing power you are either running a poorly coded program or have very flimsy data to encode. Either way it means there are more things to worry about than what a couple of hobbyists think about the end of the Mac Pro.

You mean to tell me that a 12-core Mac Pro with its 12 cores of Xeon, its way larger RAM capacity wouldn't get a Final Cut Pro or Adobe After Effects rendering job done substantially faster than a 21.5" iMac? Because if you are, I think you don't know what you're talking about at all.

If Apple dumps the Mac Pro, then my next update will be a HACKINTOSH.
I will certainly NOT go from my current 2008 Mac Pro to an iMac. If I want to see myself I'll use the mirror in my bathroom. I don't need a glossy screen to do that. Besides, I already have two 24" (non-glossy) monitors, three 1-TB drives in RAID-0, another 750 GB for music, and an SSD and a 2-TB for backups stuffed in the second optical bay. I don't think there's room in an iMac for all that.

I'll just have to immerse myself in the Hackint0sh community and learn what the best dual-chip motherboard is and associated hardware to build a screamin' Hack Pro.

(and I'll turn off auto-updates) and wait until the community finds fixes. I don't mind. Heck, My Mac Pro is still on Snow Leopard (which I prefer). I use Spaces all the time, and last I checked, Lion doesn't have spaces.

My advice, as someone who has Hackintoshed and partaken in many others' Hackintosh projects, is that before committing to your next Mac being a Hackintosh, do a little research now. It's much easier to set up a Hackintosh than it was during the days of Leopard, but build compatibility is highly dependent on what motherboard and graphics card you pick. You don't need to turn off auto-updates, just don't apply the 10.x.x updates until you know what files you'll need to patch before rebooting; it's not hard to stay current with OS builds on a Hackintosh anymore. I'd recommend having a secondary ACTUAL Mac to have around (a) in case the Hackintosh bricks and you need to recover the OS, or in case the Hackintosh suffers an odd problem and you need a computer. If you were considering a 13" MacBook Pro, this wouldn't be a bad excuse for one; plus it's not like the combined costs of a powerful Hackintosh and a 13" MacBook Pro don't still fall short of a single Mac Pro's price tag.

 

[Lone Deranger]

I could see him wanting to do a aluminum Cube as one of his last hurrahs.

I’d buy that in a heartbeat.

 

[robogobo]

I love that this thread is almost 1500 posts long. Certainly represents a show of hands for Apple to go by, relatively speaking.

 

[krazygoat]

Because with a mix of Linux, OS X, and Windows tied into the render farm which is all perl and python driven to the apps things would often break even with UNC file paths and we would often have to create ridiculous linked directory structure on the Linux and OS X boxes to get them all playing well together. Not and issue on the OS X and Linux side but from how windows maps drives and how their command line switches work.

We are still holding out with our current Xserves, a few low I/O servers have been replaced by Mini servers. We are hoping for a Mac Pro redesign that better fits in a rack and the option of going back to Linux still is a possibility.

Yes, only our engineers get admin access, but they are also the only ones running Windows. This was the recommended setup from Dassault for Solidworks and I don't like it one bit. But Solidworks is MUCH more stable under an admin account for some reason I can't figure out. Some stuff just flat out refused to work as a non-admin account and Solidworks support's official recommendation is give the users Administrator access.

I was saying OS X great positioning combined with the power of a Mac Pro is irreplacable with any of Apple's other products for us professionals that rely on it and Windows and Linux do not give us what that great combo does either.

Just out of interest: Why is powershell not an option?



In your server room as well? And now that the XServe has been cancelled?



I don't think this is correct. Once the programs are installed the admin rights can safely be dropped. Most companies running windows (that is, most companies) don't give their employees admin rights. At least we don't, unless they're software developers in which case admin rights are given regardless of OS.



I consider OS X the sweet spot between Linux and Windows so I totally agree with you but I don't see why that would have any bearing on Apple's decision regarding the viability of the Mac Pro line. In fact, the XServe being EOL'ed from one day to the other should have been a giant hint.

----------

At this point we are ready to buy ANY new Apple pro system in a heartbeat no matter what it looks like. The projects we are working on now are just crushing our systems and we have been waiting since summer for Intel to get the new chipsets out and Apple to get their new systems out.

I’d buy that in a heartbeat.

 

[macsmurf]

I was saying OS X great positioning combined with the power of a Mac Pro is irreplacable with any of Apple's other products for us professionals that rely on it and Windows and Linux do not give us what that great combo does either.

Yep. On the other hand, Apple already screwed you on the servers and a Mac Pro really isn't a server grade machine, regardless of form factor. A redesign seems unlikely. It seems to me to be a very strange move for Apple to axe the Xserve if they wanted a continued presence in this kind of market. My conclusion is that they don't. At this point continuing to invest in Apple infrastructure might not be prudent.

 

[Renzatic]

Maybe it is just a perception difference. I have a core i7 iMac at home but I don't really consider it fast enough to do the work I do, but it is awesome for dealing with my massive photography library and since I am not a professional photographer I don't need a professional screen and I consider the Apple screens to be some of the best consumer screens.

But all our developers are from Disney Interactive so I think they are used to a certain level of performance and interactivity and I have worked through some stuff with them and I come from the film side of things and I have to say I would not want anything less than the 2010 Mac Pros that they got. The Radeon card works great for Unity but not so great with Pro 3D apps so some of our 3D guys are on Quadros which while fast for high-end 3D are slower on the game side but still plenty fast enough. Of course our level of detail may be different. When working with the characters for Bulletstorm they were just crushing Maya and Modo, Zbrush was better off but I was definitely wishing for a 12 core box. Like you said though once you get into something like Unity as long as you have a decent game card you are fine, but since we are bouncing back and forth so much it is just easier to have beasty boxes for the artists. We are also looking at Mari in addition to Zbrush and Mari just crushes machines but you can do texture and projection work that Zbrush can only dream of right now.

Yeah. I think perception does has quite a bit to do with it. You're used to working in a high end environment, and probably have deadlines that require you to get something done as quickly as possible. Me? I've got my comparatively little $1200 computer, and I can goof around on a model for as long as I want.

Considering what you do, you're probably far less forgiving on hiccups and little quirks while you're modelling. For me, getting a 6 second delay while my computer calculates beveling out 500 faces on a higher poly model is nothing. I'm not in a rush. As long as it still pans and rotates smoothly, and I can do what I want without having the program fight against me, I'm good.

You're on that cutting edge pro level. You deal with super dense meshed models, multistaged 4K+ resolution textures slapped onto them, all rigged out, animated, and ready to go. And even with something as processor crunching, ram hungry, and overall mean as that model would be, you're used to instantaneous results, quick response times, and overall smoothness from all your various programs. Though a good consumer grade PC could do handle that, it couldn't handle it with nearly as much grace or poise as the machines you're used to working with.

I guess it's a "once you've driven a Ferrari, even a BMW seems quaint" type situation. For me, a good quad or hexa core i7, 16GB ram, and an entry-mid level Quadro would handle just about everything I could throw at it and more. Hell, probably for the next three years. You're used to dealing with more, and need more.

 

[wafl iron]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html#xsan

why would they go through the trouble of implementing ALUA in Lion if all they are going to do is kill off the only product that can use it?

And no customer is going to do SAN over thunderbolt unless there are two thunderbolt connections coming out of the mac. The whole point of alua is for enhanced path redundancy.

 

[Yebubbleman]

The mac pro might not make as much profit as the other macs because they are expensive and big and most people would rather buy other macs. However, the mac pro represents the best tecnology they have and many professionals that work with video and pictures buy them. If they discontinued the mac pro just like they did with the macbooks it would mean apple doesnt have one of the most powerful computers for professionals and would mean they are not a strong company. It would be a step backward as a company. They will probably not discontinue it, but will do what they are doing right now, take a long time to update them, probably 1 year or more because they do not generate much profit.

The Mac Pros don't make as much profit as the other Macs for two reasons; (a) It is an expensive machine for a single computer no matter how you slice it, and (b) they last a really long time. If you have a 2006 Mac Pro, save for running Windows 7 in Boot Camp, there's nothing you can't do with this machine. If you have any other Mac made in 2006 and you aren't thinking about upgrading (or haven't done so already), said other Mac either isn't your main Mac or you don't do anything beyond the very basics with your Mac. The same is more or less true for the 2008 Mac Pro that replaced it. If you bought a 2009 Mac Pro, you don't need either this generation or the next generation unless Sandy Bridge E does something highly specific that you need (but given that it just came out, I highly doubt software manufacturers have coded anything specific for them just yet). You are not needing to replace your Mac Pro every 5-7 years like most other Macs, but more like every 7+ years, which means less frequent repeat customers, which means less money made on that product. Plain and simple.

Yep. On the other hand, Apple already screwed you on the servers and a Mac Pro really isn't a server grade machine, regardless of form factor. A redesign seems unlikely. It seems to me to be a very strange move for Apple to axe the Xserve if they wanted a continued presence in this kind of market. My conclusion is that they don't. At this point continuing to invest in Apple infrastructure might not be prudent.

Apple nixed the Xserve because OS X Server was the only thing making the Xserve special post-Intel-Transition, and when it comes to server OSs, OS X Server doesn't bring anything compelling to the table for those that would otherwise use some flavor of Windows Server or Linux. Much unlike OS X client systems, OS X server doesn't play 100% nicely in all-Windows environments, which makes it pretty useless for the kind of marketshare that Windows and Linux server varients hold. Seems like a no-brainer to scale down OS X server to the environments that it's tried and true in, and to axe the server that has a relatively small market audience.

 

[macsmurf]

Apple nixed the Xserve because OS X Server was the only thing making the Xserve special post-Intel-Transition, and when it comes to server OSs, OS X Server doesn't bring anything compelling to the table for those that would otherwise use some flavor of Windows Server or Linux. Much unlike OS X client systems, OS X server doesn't play 100% nicely in all-Windows environments, which makes it pretty useless for the kind of marketshare that Windows and Linux server varients hold. Seems like a no-brainer to scale down OS X server to the environments that it's tried and true in, and to axe the server that has a relatively small market audience.

The reasons for killing off Xserve is secondary - the way they did it was not indicative of a company that wants to have a presence in the professional market. You just don't EOL something without warning or a migration path of some sort.

Apple can defuse the speculation about the Mac Pro by publicly announcing that they have no plans for discontinuing it and that if they do at some point, they will tell us about it at least a year in advance. They could announce a road map for the Mac Pro. They choose not to. The secrecy is great for consumer products but companies like to be able to plan ahead. If they use OS X in a way that requires a significant investment to switch, they have a problem.

I think Apple makes great products but I would never trust them. The reason is simply that they aren't trustworthy.

 

[BlingBling]

The low end Xeon processors are not that expensive. It's the mark-up that's so extremely high on the entry level models.

Level the mark-up, and sales would go up.

And a few advertisements wouldn't hurt, either.

Even with the price of an I7 the Xeon isn't right for my line of work/play. I do real-time rendering, typically in one thread and games in the off hours. The graphics card is my bottleneck and the desktop mac pro is the ideal platform for me, but it's just to darn expensive. I typically run a windows desktop and I upgrade that every 2-3 years for a grand, with the bulk of the money going into the graphics card. The displays I keep for a long long time. iMac, macMini aren't for me, and the laptops are too noisy/slow as an ideal desktop replacement. But right now I'm doing iOS development so I need an apple platform, otherwise I'm on a windows box.

Apple just doesn't care for the pro user that's doesn't have the 2400 to plonk down on a desktop with an 3 year old video card and a multi-core server processor that they don't necessarily need. Jeez Apple, all the other PC manufactures ship out thousands of sku's of machines of all specs and sizes and you can't even update the 4 versions of dedicated desktop boxes you sell?

And to the people who are posting that the Mac Pro's aren't needed anymore for Pro's because the consumer line of products fulfill all the computing requirements we need, please stop posting on this topic because you don't know what your talking about.

 

[Ice Dragon]

I agree with you BlingBling and I don't even want nor need a Mac Pro. Apple should have at least one computer to appeal to its pro customers though they definitely need to have better graphics options. If you're going to buy a computer with a vicious 16 core processor and an Apple Thunderbolt display, you should be able to have a video card in there that can play the latest games on the best settings and do things that take advantage of great graphics.

 

[InuNacho]

Essentially what we all want here is the old Powermac G4 model on the current Mac Pros.

The base quad at $1,499
The lower mid tier hex at $2,199
The higher mid tier 8 core system at $2,799
And the big monster 12 core at $3,499

 

[MacRohde]

This is a classic MBA strategy: cut away the low profit areas. And do it now.

And this strategy has proved to be disastrous for so many companies, and might do so for Apple. I can't understand why Apple would want to only bet on such a fickle and trend-based market as the consumer gadgets. Yes, it funds the party now. But next year MS or Google, or HP or some new company might come out with a new phone and phone users (even Apple's) aren't that loyal.

By cutting out the top content creators, Apple might be cutting the hand that feeds them.

 

[relbbircs]

Why No Roadmap?

Thinking about the Apple tradition of not having a roadmap, probably the explanation has everything to do with Steve Jobs' management style. Now he's gone, that should change -- to be reasonable about it -- at least in so far as a roadmap provides greater stability in the MP community.

 

[Renzatic]

Ars Technica has posted an interesting article on just this subject.

 

[Bernard SG]

This is a classic MBA strategy: cut away the low profit areas. And do it now.

And this strategy has proved to be disastrous for so many companies, and might do so for Apple. I can't understand why Apple would want to only bet on such a fickle and trend-based market as the consumer gadgets. Yes, it funds the party now. But next year MS or Google, or HP or some new company might come out with a new phone and phone users (even Apple's) aren't that loyal.

By cutting out the top content creators, Apple might be cutting the hand that feeds them.

Assuming that Apple really contemplates axing the Mac Pro in the near future, I don't think financial profit is the main factor for such a decision. Actually, despite the fact that Intel has increased its prices for Xeon, it's quite likely that a Mac Pro costs less to build today than than back 5 years ago, if considered only in financial terms.
The issue is more likely one of engineering resources (I mean people). It's reported that Apple doesn't have hyper-specialized engineering teams working on the various products. It's basically the same people who design all the stuff, Mac or iOS devices and those are not large teams.

 

[Nostromo]

Ars Technica has posted an interesting article on just this subject.

Great article.

Interesting that even people working for iGadgets rely on the Mac Pro:

Developers also often rely on Mac Pros to shave significant time off the complex app building process. "I use a Mac Pro at the office to build Mac and iPhone apps," developer Raphael Sebbe said. "Working with Xcode, which is highly parallel, makes full use of the cores. My Mac Pro has eight cores—16 virtual ones—and does a fresh build about five times faster than on my MacBook Pro."

The obvious long-term damage to the Apple world is described as what can be interpreted as the end of Apple for serious users:

If Apple does decide to kill the Mac Pro, Alper believes the ill effects will extend beyond users' immediate needs. "The risk is dire, in my opinion," he told Ars. "When Apple does things that make it easier for IT guys to say 'no' to Apple hardware, they do themselves a disservice. Things like the consumerization of Lion Server, they make it easier for the corporate Windows IT guy to just say "no," but when they have one of the best personal computers on the market, the Mac Pro, it makes it easier to say 'yes.'

"Employees have been gaining grassroots support for Macs by bringing in their own machines. Those guys in IT, they will use the Mac Pro's death as a reason to cut support," Alper said.

Microsoft is watching, and already working on a Switcher Campaign.

I'm still confident that Apple wants to keep its status as a serious computer company - which it would lose without the Mac Pro.

It doesn't matter how great OS X is - if there's no great computer to run it.

 

[robogobo]

I agree with Marco Arment's reasoning, especially when it comes to compromising the Mac Pro's configuration. There's no way to change it without killing its usefulness. But his argument for discontinuing it makes no sense. He says it's too big and too expensive, but it can't get smaller and is competitively priced.

People who need the Mac Pro NEED a Mac Pro. There simply is no replacement. Rumors say Apple is slowly but surely abandoning the professionals, and before this current drama, FCP was the crux of the argument. Yet, Apple turned around and admitted their error by re-releasing the previous version of FCP and worked quickly to restore the features that were dumbed down or removed. That isn't abandonment- more of a nudge to see what will stick and what won't. The MacRumors article that got this current nonsense started, now with a comment thread 1500 posts long, acts similarly to see what will stick. I'm not saying all those commenters will buy Mac Pros, but it does make me wonder how many of those who don't think it's a big deal if Apple axes the line, have actually used one.

In terms of "what would Steve do?" (which I don't believe is the right way of thinking, necessarily, but good for an argument nonetheless), what machines, OS and applications will Pixar's studios be using in ten years if there's no Mac Pro? Dell, Windows and Adobe? What will I, a media professional and die hard Apple head, be using? And how will that trickle down?