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Right? Especially since Apple has competition in the high end vs the energy efficient laptop segment/phones.

Apple needs to compete with AMD and Intel on their flagship processors, yet is waiting for fall to launch their first processor based off the A17 cores and its for a phone, which they are crushing all metrics in already..
It isn't like Apple isn't TRYING to finish and get the M* Quadra out the door :)

Sometimes engineering is hard.
 
No, it'd make perfect sense. It would outperform their current Mac Pros and wouldnt cost 50 THOUSAND dollars. Effing insanity.. beyond insanity. Tim Cook's gone completely mental thinking an outdated desktop should cost that much.

Yeah, but they would be PCIe limited, and the W-3400 chips are way more appropriate for a workstation. Other than Apple's stupid prices for RAM and storage, the Mac Pro prices are normal for workstations. Apple has zero need to sell a cheaper x86 desktop.
 
I don't think that will happen, it just seems so wrong to maintain macOS x86_64 for one single computer, and that being the one with the lowest sales numbers.
Because Apple's made it GIGANTIC ripoff. It costs more than a CAR. If they priced it adequately, it'd have a LOT more people buying it. 13900k costs $570 retail. Apple could double this price, and people would still buy it. They're not going to do it because all the top level execs at apple have their head up their ass and couldnt give two ***** about consumers.
 
It isn't like Apple isn't TRYING to finish and get the M* Quadra out the door :)

Sometimes engineering is hard.
For sure!

Most other companies release their flagships tho and then trickle down to lesser chips using the same tech.

So releasing an m3 first, when the m2 is already "crushing" that tier, doesn't make sense to me. (outside of engineering hold ups)

Release the m3 ultra right out the gate, compete on the high end, and then worry about the MacBook Air/Mac mini type devices? (shrugs)
 
Just release an Intel 13900k Mac Pro and call it a day. That CPU runs circles around anything and everything Apple has to offer. Jesus christ, it's NOT that hard. A company worth 3 trillion dollars cant sell a good computer? That's embarrassing.
Nah, threadripper or Epyc, so you can have up to 64 cores and heaps of PCIe lanes, all while not requiring an upgraded fuse panel to your house. Intel is way behind on efficiency these days, and many core Xeons are even worse, up to 700W!
 
Is it just me or are the updated processors a complete mess? Wouldn't one think processors would trickle down from high end device to low end device, or is that just rational thought?
It would appear to make sense but from a purely operational standpoint the current method makes more sense. Standard M chips are designed then produced which allows Apple to build up yield rate before enhancing the existing desitn for M variants and increasing manufacturing.
 
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For sure!

Most other companies release their flagships tho and then trickle down to lesser chips using the same tech.

So releasing an m3 first, when the m2 is already "crushing" that tier, doesn't make sense to me. (outside of engineering hold ups)

Release the m3 ultra right out the gate, compete on the high end, and then worry about the MacBook Air/Mac mini type devices? (shrugs)
It makes no business sense to de-prioritize highest selling Mac device, the MBA
 
For sure!

Most other companies release their flagships tho and then trickle down to lesser chips using the same tech.

So releasing an m3 first, when the m2 is already "crushing" that tier, doesn't make sense to me. (outside of engineering hold ups)

Release the m3 ultra right out the gate, compete on the high end, and then worry about the MacBook Air/Mac mini type devices? (shrugs)
Exactly! Why should a device my grandma uses get the M3 before I need the extra power to do my work better?
 
Still no M3? It feels like Corona and the asian lock down restrictions are now reflected on the consumer end in delayed product innovations. Everything feels being delayed for like two years in many industries. Digital cameras are another example and some more specialised industrial chips. I hope things catch up again.
 
For sure!

Most other companies release their flagships tho and then trickle down to lesser chips using the same tech.

So releasing an m3 first, when the m2 is already "crushing" that tier, doesn't make sense to me. (outside of engineering hold ups)

Release the m3 ultra right out the gate, compete on the high end, and then worry about the MacBook Air/Mac mini type devices? (shrugs)
But the M3 Ultra only will exist because Apple has to dump cash into making the A* chips on the phones first.

More importantly, the M3 Ultra sells so little, that it probably can't even cover the fab costs. If Apple just went out and made and sold M3 Ultras, they would probably cost WAY WAY more than they do today, due to limited production volume.

Ignoring watches and other stuff, Apple only makes three computer chips:

A*
M*
M* Max

The A* matters the most because that is where all Apple's money comes from.

The M* is then then "A*x" like bump from the A* chip, that goes in high-end iPads and low-end Macs.

The M* Max can be cut down to an M* Pro version

The M* Max can be doubled to an M* Ultra

In the future the M* Max can be quadrupled to an M* "Quadra"

There is no world where Apple can just come out with an M3 Ultra without having the production ramp up to release all of the above.
 
It makes no business sense to de-prioritize highest selling Mac device, the MBA
Pros fled Apple in droves in 2013+ with the trash Mac Pro. They didn’t focus on the high end. They still aren’t. If no pros exist for macOS, then it will never improve. This is about all we will get for Macs. And I’m tired of using Windows already.
 
Releasing a 13900K Mac Pro would be pointless...

However, the Xeon W-3400 chips that Intel just released this year WOULD be a perfectly valid upgrade for the existing Mac Pro line.

Of course, the chance that Apple does that is somewhere around 2% :)
Apple used to do quiet upgrades to whatever the latest iteration was of whatever was being made. People that already ordered got the upgrade at no extra cost. Made for some happy people when the box arrived and they opened it up.
 
Because Apple's made it GIGANTIC ripoff. It costs more than a CAR. If they priced it adequately, it'd have a LOT more people buying it. 13900k costs $570 retail. Apple could double this price, and people would still buy it. They're not going to do it because all the top level execs at apple have their head up their ass and couldnt give two ***** about consumers.ut if Apple decided to lower their prices, a Mac Pro would still be the most expensive and the one with the lowest sales numbers so I don’t really get your point there.
Because Apple's made it GIGANTIC ripoff. It costs more than a CAR. If they priced it adequately, it'd have a LOT more people buying it. 13900k costs $570 retail. Apple could double this price, and people would still buy it. They're not going to do it because all the top level execs at apple have their head up their ass and couldnt give two ***** about consumers.
But if Apple decided to lower their prices, a Mac Pro would still be the most expensive and the one with the lowest sales numbers so I don’t really get your point there.

More Mac Pros would probably be sold but maintaining an operating system for one computer is just ridiculous. I don't believe it.
 
But the M3 Ultra only will exist because Apple has to dump cash into making the A* chips on the phones first.

More importantly, the M3 Ultra sells so little, that it probably can't even cover the fab costs. If Apple just went out and made and sold M3 Ultras, they would probably cost WAY WAY more than they do today, due to limited production volume.

Ignoring watches and other stuff, Apple only makes three computer chips:

A*
M*
M* Max

The A* matters the most because that is where all Apple's money comes from.

The M* is then then "A*x" like bump from the A* chip, that goes in high-end iPads and low-end Macs.

The M* Max can be cut down to an M* Pro version

The M* Max can be doubled to an M* Ultra

In the future the M* Max can be quadrupled to an M* "Quadra"

There is no world where Apple can just come out with an M3 Ultra without having the production ramp up to release all of the above.
Your logic is sound, its just a bummer/backwards vs what the market needs.

As someone above commented, it doesnt make sense to put an m3 in the machine their grandparent uses when there are pro consumers who need more horsepower for their career.

Again, your logic is sound, but the m2 MBA is already such a good machine, that replacing the chip in that first , when they are leading the pack doesn't make sense from a competition stand point.
 
I see a lot of posts here taking rumors for fact. Sure, its fun to speculate - but it’s counterproductive to take any rumor as fact.
Nah knowing Apple this is a fact. They haven’t put any focus on high end macs in a long time. Not since 2012 Mac Pro. The 2019 was way too overpriced and just seemed like it was half-***ed.
 
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Really goes to shows how poorly thought out the entire Apple silicon transition was.
I was wowed by Apple silicon until it became clear that alternate OS compatibility was far, far in the future... maybe not at all.
 
Hey Tim, how about we give those Mac sales a little nudge while you continue to figure out what to do with the Mac Pro? Let's stick that M2 Max chip onto the Mac Studio, upgrade a few of its ports to match the new MacBook Pro, and voila! You will make loads of pro customers very happy, and they will also momentarily forget that we're still waiting for that big cheese grater.
The lack of ports on desktop Macs baffles me.
 
The lack of ports on desktop Macs baffles me.
Yeah, my Mini has a Caldigit and two 9-port hubs with USB-A connectors. I don't use them all, but I've had as many as 15 things plugged in at any given time. There are cables everywhere. That's not including the stuff that's permanently connected.
 
As someone above commented, it doesnt make sense to put an m3 in the machine their grandparent uses when there are pro consumers who need more horsepower for their career.

To be fair, grandparents are not the primary users of MacBook Airs. :)

Seriously, the MacBook Air is the highest-selling model of Mac. That translates into both a significant number of new sales and a significant number of replacement sales (of previous generation models) every year. Both justify the MacBook Air always being on the latest generation of M series SoC. The MacBook Pro also has a very strong annual new/replacement sales cycle and justifies generational updates.

The Mac Pro is on the opposite end. It makes up a single-digit percentage of "professional" Mac sales per Apple's comments in 2017. And those folks who drop five-figures on a Mac Pro tend to not replace it every year, even if the revenue streams they generate from the machine would allow for such. And this is not a unique situation for the Mac Pro, but applies to all desktop Mac families (Mac Studio, Mac mini and iMac).

Also, desktop form factor models make up the significant minority of Mac sales (less than 20%) so while there are new and replacement annual sales, the volume of them pales compared to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines. Therefore, not being on the latest and greatest generation is not as detrimental to those models as it is for the portables.
 
I believe that Grid computing needs to be resurrected. Why is Apple not working on this, with the broad distribution of Appel hardware now in use? Its the perfect opportunity to leverage idle processors.
Yes! Bring back Xgrid and Xserve! Let Xserve stay on x86 while all of the other Macs use AS.
 
To be fair, grandparents are not the primary users of MacBook Airs. :)

Seriously, the MacBook Air is the highest-selling model of Mac. That translates into both a significant number of new sales and a significant number of replacement sales (of previous generation models) every year. Both justify the MacBook Air always being on the latest generation of M series SoC. The MacBook Pro also has a very strong annual new/replacement sales cycle and justifies generational updates.

The Mac Pro is on the opposite end. It makes up a single-digit percentage of "professional" Mac sales per Apple's comments in 2017. And those folks who drop five-figures on a Mac Pro tend to not replace it every year, even if the revenue streams they generate from the machine would allow for such. And this is not a unique situation for the Mac Pro, but applies to all desktop Mac families (Mac Studio, Mac mini and iMac).

Also, desktop form factor models make up the significant minority of Mac sales (less than 20%) so while there are new and replacement annual sales, the volume of them pales compared to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines. Therefore, not being on the latest and greatest generation is not as detrimental to those models as it is for the portables.
If these figures are to be believed, the Mac Pro is quite popular still.


I wonder if they figured out if they loose the top end pros, it trickles down? Could be wrong, but if let's say a movie studios started using windows machines because the m2ultra Mac Pro wasnt up to snuff, that could start affecting Mac purchases for entire company/ its workers? I could be wrong and most likely am!
 
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