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It depends on how Apple defines "upgradeable," doesn't it. Every Apple product is upgradeable just by buying the "newest" one and that is how they like it now.They don't want the grubby little hands of their customers touching "their, meaning Apple's," stuff.
 
Just goes to show Apple doesn't give a **** about professionals anymore.
 
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Yeah, just add it to the long list of products that Apple doesn't care if it's a flop or not, right? You think Apple only cares about the iPhone and Macbook?

I'm afraid they only really care about the iPhone and the iPad.
As a Mac user I was happier back in the days when the iPhone wasn't their main product.
I wouldn't say they don't care if one of their product is a flop, but the don't put enough energy on the Mac anymore.
They're focused on the consumer market, especially on the iOS devices.
The Mac mini would be the perfect consumer devices, and it hasn't received an update for more than 1000 days. I mean, come on... at least put a new CPU, or cut the price or whatever. If they're income depended on the Mac they would release new products or updates much faster and frequently. Mac pro is 4 years old, they promised a new one but they're taking their time...
 
The problem isn't overall sales / profitability, they've got that worked out pretty well.

The problem is effectively telling their customers, "We've totally got your back, as a supplier of computers to fit all your demanding needs... up to a certain point. After that, get bent, and go use Windows or Linux or something, because we don't care about you then."

But even for a large pool of users who think they might eventually have such needs, but never end up needing it, having an all-Apple upgrade path in front of them gives them the security to buy that mid-level Apple machine today. Having no workable upgrade path beyond an all-in-one filled with laptop-class parts is frustrating and worrisome.

Remember, everyone likes to quote the "can't innovate my ass" line, while laughing at the current Mac Pro, but that was said at an unveiling coming as an answer to the previous neglected Mac Pro. They made a world-class pro machine, the "cheese grater" Mac Pro, and then they didn't stay aggressive on upgrading it, and people worried for a long time, so they went in their secret cave and created the cylindrical Mac Pro, which was an amazing start, and then they... ... ... nothing. They let that one wither on the vine too.

The cylindrical Mac Pro is an amazing design, and should be put in an art museum, but it fails on all sorts of practicality points that the old cheese grater totally had covered. They let pride get in the way and showed off how well they could design... a work of art. But not a practical pro-level machine. There's a scene in Ocean's Eleven, where Rusty (Brad Pitt's character) is trying to teach a roomful of idiots how to play poker, and one of the idiots lays down his cards with a flourish, proudly announcing, "All REDS!" And gets congratulated by all the other idiots. Doing a great job of totally not the thing that's needed/important/relevant, and feeling he "totally nailed it". Remind you of anyone's ass innovations?

Apple set out to make a machine for people with "professional" needs, for those extreme edge/corner cases, demanding uses (ones not adequately served by their existing standard Mac lines), and their target market had a checklist that started out with, "Power/speed. Capability. Expandability." And Apple somehow came away from that focus group with a checklist that started with, "Innovative/sleek. Small. Quiet." And built a machine that... not only couldn't the customers expand it, but even Apple couldn't figure out how to upgrade it. So it died on the vine. AGAIN. The target market didn't ask for the machine to be tiny and round. Those were odd design choices that Apple made. If they'd kept at it and made improved versions (setting aside the utter lack of expandability for a moment), then they might have gotten away with it. But it didn't play out like that, and Apple didn't even try to keep the machine relevant, much less cutting-edge. Instead, no matter how pretty the "current" Mac Pro is, it's a complete failure on the axes that are important to the intended users.

(Apple could have come out a couple years ago and said, "sorry, we screwed up by releasing a shiny new unexpandable Mac Pro that maxed out its thermal envelope on the first day - here's a recycled cheese grater Mac Pro chassis with the latest/greatest CPUs, graphics cards, and I/O ports", and the pro users would have sang their praises. But Apple was apparently more concerned with image and artistry than with meeting the customer's needs.)

I'd like to see Apple once again make a machine perfectly aimed at the high end - even if I don't need one right now - so I know that it's there if/when I do. (I'd also like them to make the mythical xMac - one step up from the Mac Mini, a small headless desktop box with a decent cpu/gpu and easy-open doors for upgrading the ram, storage, etc. - but I don't really believe in fairy tales any more.)

This comes down to the lack of a visionary. The cylindrical Mac Pro should have shared the same fate the G4 Cube did (11-month lifespan). They both were way ahead of their time to be a commercial success. Unfortunately, nobody got the balls Steve Jobs did to pull the plug.

Being a four year old computer, the Mac Pro is still a very capable machine. The slow adoption of Thunderbolt was more of a blame than thermal capacity in the 6,1 failure. Paired with an eGPU, the Mac Pro is a very good alternative to iMac Pro.

late-2013-mac-pro-radeon-vega-fe-egpu-bare.jpg nMP-Mantiz-Venus-RX-Vega-56-eGPU-implementation.jpg
 
I'm really interested to see what the new display will look like.
If they took the Thunderbolt Display and made it 5K, added a better mic, better camera, better speakers and more ports to act as a hub since the new MacBook Pro's only have USB-C. Oh it would be perfect.

I mean, just look at it, it still looks great, even with the huge bezels. The sturdy aluminium design is still lightyears away from that new LG monstrosity.

Edit: And while you're at it, add a HDMI port. It would be great if I didn't have to use a separate display to play on a console once in a while.

For what it is worth, I wish you were right, I agree with you. But, respectfully, you are on crack if you think Apple will produce a product with backward compatible ports for plugging in a console.

Apple has no respect or thought to the world outside of Apple products. They will not build anything to co-function with another company's product.

Apple is myopic to the world outside of Apple.
 
The Mac Pro towers from 2006 to 2012 shows that there is hope, I think.

The cMP is history, it was 6 years ago and I remember when the 2012 came out I felt like come on apple is that all you can do. The trash can came out and i thought it was beautiful but removed everything I needed from my mac pro...

They aren’t interested, they don’t want a machine you can upgrade they want a machine that suits the current need and be replaced in 2-3 years. Making you buy a new device or trade in more often so they get more money from you. Which makes sense if there was incentive, like they dont cost the earth and there was innovation in the technology to make you do so.

Unfortunately were not talking sub £1000 like an ipad or iphone but a fairly heavy investment and they make no business sense to turn around in that time.

I started my career working for a large newspaper company who had moved from hot metal to digital. They bought everyone 2004 power mac G4 dual 1.25s, couple of servers to run. Cost about 100k.

I started working there in 2009 and they didnt swap them out until 2011. Thats what happens in the industry not a new machine every 3 years like people make you believe. Its even worse now because there has been very little change in chip speed, the difference is in bus speed and physical media.

Case in point my 2010 mac pro hex runs the similar numbers multi as the i7 5k imac and is 7 years its senior.
 
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Just goes to show Apple doesn't give a **** about professionals anymore.
Your claim might actually make sense if Apple hadn’t just released an 18-core Xeon with 128GB of ECC RAM, a screaming fast 4 TB SSD, Radeon Vega64 graphics, 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports and a 10 Gbps Ethernet port. This is exactly the machine that some pros have been waiting for.

Other pros don’t want an all in one iMac Pro; they want a modular, upgradable machine with a separate monitor. That Mac Pro is still in development. Many wish it had come to market in 2013, instead of the cylinder. (But the cylinder is loved by some pros, despite the fact it doesn’t fit the needs of others.)

Apple screws up sometimes, but when they realize it, they have a pretty good track record of fixing it.

So you’d be correct to say, that with the release of the fastest Mac ever—and with an even faster, modular, upgradable Mac Pro still to come—that Apple cares more about professionals than ever before.
 
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I'm really interested to see what the new display will look like.
If they took the Thunderbolt Display and made it 5K, added a better mic, better camera, better speakers and more ports to act as a hub since the new MacBook Pro's only have USB-C. Oh it would be perfect.

I mean, just look at it, it still looks great, even with the huge bezels. The sturdy aluminium design is still lightyears away from that new LG monstrosity.

Edit: And while you're at it, add a HDMI port. It would be great if I didn't have to use a separate display to play on a console once in a while.


1317358652-apples-newest-version-of-thunderbolt-display-mc914lla-2.jpg

Agree...also add a SD card slot like the iMac pro. I hope the new screen will also allow the current Mac Pro 2013 to be able to hook up to it. include a thunderbolt 2 option for us who have the "Trash Can". That would make up for the lack of upgradability in the current Mac Pro.

5k beauty (or even a 4K) for the current Mac Pro 2013...please...
 
Possibly one of Apple's biggest mistakes?

I don't think so. It was a powerful machine for the time, the problem is that they were unable to update it with new hardware for whatever reason, and dropped the price way too late. Also overall it was released too early - it really needed thunderbolt 3 connectivity speeds to drop the internal upgradability.
 
This makes me think of when VR headsets were coming out and they said they wouldn't be designing for Mac products because they weren't strong enough. I paid $700 for an upgrade and I think of Mac Pro owners who paid $3000 with zero options. There should always be options to upgrade Mac products to some degree, especially Mac Pros.
 
For the crowd that is always whining or worrying about a new model coming out soon after they buy, those who bought this thing kept up with Apple's "latest version" for all these years.
I don't see what that has to do with wanting a new MP? My 2012 Mac mini is running HS and I have a few laptops that are pushing 10 years old, actually one of them is going on 11 years old and they all run Windows 10 just fine even with 2GB of ram.

I'd be interested in a modular MP if it's priced right and I know for sure that Apple is not going to update the mini anymore. Unfortunately gone are the days since Steve where we had a unified voice and vision. Today Apple loves to play Good Cop/Bad Cop. You tend to get mixed messages from Apple HQ these days.
 
My quad core i7 Mac mini is five years old today. It's sad there isn't a replacement for it available yet.
Agreed, however you should still revel that you have the best Mac Mini ever made. :p

We’ll see what Tim does. It seems like now that they pushed the “X,” out, they may be taking the Mac a bit more seriously.
 
Based on the iMac Pro price it wouldn't surprise me if the new Mac Pro starts at $4,999 also with another $1,999 for the new display they make to go with it. Gone are the days of a $1999-$2,499 start price for a Mac Pro I think.
Inflation and market growth.
 
Love mine, fast, stable, takes up little room., but yes, it is the Mac Cube gen 2.

I don't work in any sort of video production or anything that needs a ton of power, this thing will be good for me for years.
 
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I have the Mac Pro 1,1. It gets used everyday, and I am very impressed with it performance versus it age.

Yeah, but that says more about your demands than it says anything about the capabilities of that machine. I also had a Quad Core Mac Pro 1,1 once. I currently have a low-end custom built machine with a quad core 2.05 GHz AMD 5350 CPU in it. And guess what? That tiny processor feels about as powerful as the Quad Xeon from that old Mac Pro. For 35 bucks it provides more than enough computing power for every day office or consumer tasks and can even compete with that ancient Mac Pro 1,1 hardware.

But that's the reason why the PC market is flatlining: Those old machines have enough bang for what most people do with them. Buy a gaming console for your gaming needs and then even an eight years old computer will suffice.

Let's face it... Apple only keeps the Macs around so that people can use Xcode and write software for iOS. And even for that job, those out-dated specs are still good enough.
 
I don't see what that has to do with wanting a new MP? My 2012 Mac mini is running HS and I have a few laptops that are pushing 10 years old, actually one of them is going on 11 years old and they all run Windows 10 just fine even with 2GB of ram.

I'd be interested in a modular MP if it's priced right and I know for sure that Apple is not going to update the mini anymore. Unfortunately gone are the days since Steve where we had a unified voice and vision. Today Apple loves to play Good Cop/Bad Cop. You tend to get mixed messages from Apple HQ these days.

I'm not putting down wanting a new MP at all- just pointing out that almost every Mac thread has posts by those who are wanting to wait for the next upgrade or are seemingly afraid to buy now out of fear for the next new upgrade coming too soon. In this case, those who bought then dodged the sense of not being on the cutting edge for years.
 
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