I know that we aren't a huge audience but the profit margin has to be extremely high for the Mac Pros.
The MP has good margins, but even so, it doesn't make a big contribution to the bottom line, due to it's current sales volume, and the growth rate of workstations are in negative territory.
Combining these facts tend to cause products to be EOL'ed. Now whether or not Apple will do this isn't absolutely known, but looking at their more recent history, it seems possible IMO. Even probable.
For me at least,
when is the real question now. From a technical POV (performance), cutting the MP before consumer grade SP socket parts reach 8 cores on a single die would be a mistake. But if the financials look that horrible to Apple, they could go ahead and cut it before this happens.
BTW, 8 cores on a single SP die is expected with Haswell, which is the architecture to follow Ivy Bridge. Please note however, I'm talking about the enthusiast/SP Xeon socket (i.e currently is LGA1366, and will be LGA2011 with the SB and IB series), not the mainstream consumer socket that will be used for Haswell.
The reasoning behind this, is Apple's margins would put MSRP's too high to continue with DP systems (DP parts are expensive; Intel's margins combined with Apple's is reaching the point where it will be untenable for enough potential buyers that the negative growth would eventually create a financial loss if they continued with it too long). BTW, the margin on the base DP model is 56%, and 57% for the SP base unit. But since the costs are lower for the SP systems, it's easier for potential buyers to justify/accept.
If this rumor were to be true my WORK would become far more time consuming and difficult. My machine will last me (I would think) 5 years or more. But when I do need to upgrade and there isn't a pro-desktop anymore, what will people like me do?
If this happens, you'd have a couple of choices.
- Switch (PC running Windows, Linux, or both = switch software as well as hardware; full support, including the OS, from the system vendor though).
- Hackintosh (still a PC, but running OS X and all OS support is on the user).
As per this requiring more time, I'm not sure, given posts from other members.
I see more and more on forums considering moving to Windows. Problem for me as a musician I Use Logic - and that is Mac only.
So a Hackintosh could be a solution - but how powerful can that be?
In terms of hardware, as powerful or more so than an MP, depending on what you're using, and whether or not you're willing to Over Clock it. And as you'd be using standardized equipment, things like the PSU and case can be recycled if you're building the system yourself.
