'Constant Negativity' From Pro Users Led Apple to Develop Modular Mac Pro, Which May Not Ship Until 2019

[a.gomez]

Lets hope they do not come up with another garbage "trying to be different" form-facto like this trash can nonsense. Just make something simple like the old macpro. With Space and internal expansion bays.

 

[itguy06]

Says someone who obviously knows nothing about the quality and reliability of Dell Precision Workstations...unless you are still regurgitating 10 year old myths about Dell, MOST name-brand equipment (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.) is all very reliable nowadays. Unless, of course, you choose bottom-of-the-line crap in which case you deserve what you get.

Dell XPS, Dell Latitude and Optiplex and Dell Precision are all great quality. The latter models are backed by standard 3 year warranties...your precious Apple won't even stand behind their hardware with that.

Thanks but I do know what I speak. I do corporate IT work (for decades now) and we use POS Dells from the Precision and Latitude lines. Their machines are junk. So are their "servers". I use one daily and it's garbage with a four letter name that rhymes with Hell. The only good thing is that it has great battery life due to it having a huge battery.

Nothing Dell makes or has made is worthy of the cardboard box it ships in. Thankfully in the next 1-2 years Dell will be gone as we're going to a more open PC policy. I'd love a ThinkPad, Mac or the Elitebook x360.

 

[Jcxa]

I don't think Apple could respond quickly even if they wanted to. They simply have too much on their plate on update all of their products in parallel, and some categories simply had to give. 2019 is already a best-case scenario, IMO

Perhaps. Apple is large enough to do many things simultaneously. Responsible leadership would have acquired a bigger plate before launching new endeavors. 2019 is beyond the pale for a mere desktop however.

 

[slu]

I suspect some major surprises over the next couple of years.

- Return of the 17 inch MacBook Pro model in 2012-15 style chassis
- 4k OLED display
- Infinity style display except above web cam bezel
- Return of USB A in addition to two USB C ports
- Return of ports such as HDMI and SD Card reader
- Slightly thicker 2012-15 style chassis to accommodate larger battery, DDR4 RAM
- Back to using the latest nVidia Graphics
- Touch Bar dropped, return of function keys, Touch ID stays
- Butterfly keys dropped in favor of older style keyboard
- Return of smaller track pad
- Return of the back lit Apple logo
- Return of boot chime

Not a single one of these things will happen.

 

[kevina2]

Someone needs to put marketing in the back seat and tell them to **** (looking right at you Phil!). Too many watch bands and too much time on project Titan (cars...really?). I stopped spending thousands on Apple every year about two years ago. I'm just worried because I can't see myself ever using another OS and yet I'm actively looking to leave this mess of an ecosystem. Starting with a hammer to my Apple TV remote that I use to control Plex.

I am absolutely stunned at Apple's late response to all this. I'd rather step in dog @#$% than buy the new MBP.

 

[jeffreyg]

This might be pretty unreasonable of me to suggest, but what about something like a single OWC Dock per room? (yes, expensive also). What's the downside to that which I'm not seeing? (vs. 100k in older equipment stockpiling).

The downside is that docks are no where near as reliable or practical as people seem to think they are. I'm in a similar situation running IT in a mid-sized advertising agency. We'd waited and waited and waited for new laptops. I had serious reservations about buying the new MBPs, but ultimately did. 12 of them, and all the associated dongles and adapters. They've been the most unsatisfying, problematic laptops we've ever had. No one who has one likes them, and some positively detest them.

Recently I needed to equip some new meeting rooms and momentarily hesitated about buying Mac Minis to run the presentation systems in there, thinking that "surely there must be new models soon". But I came to my senses, and bought the current model, because who knows what sort of unusable nightmare a new Mac Mini might turn out to be? No thanks.

 

[KPOM]

OK, so maybe I went a little overboard on "not practical" but when you compare it to the 2015 model, it's painful to live with. I travel to different clients a lot and I have yet to see any business with a USB-C input on their video projector or TV. I always have to plug into HDMI. It really is nice to not have to carry any dongles around. Someone hands me a USB thumb drive? No problem. Wife hands me the SD card from her DSLR? No problem.

I completely agree that USB-C is the future, but they could have kept the same casing as the 2015, replaced the 2x thunderbolt 2 ports with thunderbolt 3 type-Cs, and would have had room left over for some of those new batteries from the MBr.

Well lots of my clients still have stupid VGA ports on their projectors. Apple doesn't play that game. But the $300 price hike plus $50-100 adapters might have been a bit much for some. I already owned a 12" MacBook so didn't care. My adapters worked just fine. But I can see others feeling nickeled and dimed.
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Nope. While I wasn't pleased about the price increase, I have plenty of money and could have lived with that. What I couldn't live with was the lack of a simple USB-A port (and to a lesser extent, the removal of the SD slot), let alone the complaining that would have come from the family about it. We all use USB-A flash drives for bringing home files from work/school or exchanging photos etc with friends. None of our friends/schools/workplaces have USB-C slots. Even if it were included in the box, having to use a dongle or a dock is significantly less convenient, and defeats the purpose of having a thin, attractive laptop, because you always have to have that cr*p either plugged in or lying around on the bench.

I have an iPhone 7, and the reason there are few complaints about the headphone adapter is because most people only use a single set of headphones, so it's no hassle to just leave the adapter connected to them. On the other hand, if you use multiple sets of headphones (I use the apple ones for the gym or walking to work, but have an active noise cancelling set for travel), or if you swap your headpones between the lightning port on your phone and the 3.5mm jack on another device, the adapter is a nuisance.

The USB-A adapter is $19. Not a big deal. Don't go OTT and tell me you let a $19 adapter break your decision on a $1800 Mac.
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For a single user you are likely right. But, compound this with 100 or even 500 systems! Just a big mess! It was a bad move!

Not really. The adapters are cheap enough. It's mostly a symbolic move. If the MacBook Pros were $200 cheaper no corporation would complain about the $20-50 adapters.

 

[groove-agent]

Let's face it, Steve Jobs WAS Apple. He left them once, they almost went bankrupt. He's gone again, and (stock prices aside) Apple is slowly falling apart IMO. I don't want to admit it, but I think it's just not the same company without Steve. He led the company to huge success, so it's going to take a while before they run it completely into the ground again. I hope I'm wrong. I get the impression that Tim barely steers the ship and is more of a figurehead. He's probably so laid back compared to Steve that the staff are resting on their laurels and are not being productive.

2019 is far too late for a new Mac Pro, and no new iMacs until October? People are going to need solutions before then and buy into other company's ecosystems. This is a good time for competitors to swoop in and take Apple customer's away. So you wait until 2019, and the Mac Pro sucks or is stupidly expensive? You've waited years for nothing.

Apple admits they've made a mistake, and have neglected pro users. Is this the same company you want to hold out for and invest in? I hope so, but it's not looking that way to me.

I built a hackintosh as my "foot out the door" MacOS machine - probably for $1500 less than what Apple will charge and I didn't have to wait until 2019 to use it.

B... but I thought the new MacBook Pro had set new sales records?

Either way, I think Apple HQ is beginning to realise that they can make very rationale decisions (and hold much-needed talk with press) in the absence of Cook. The guy might as well not even be CEO; the amount of time he spends flirting with asian dudes is criminal.

 

[jeffreyg]

Yeah, nowadays Apple changes direction with the speed and agility of Microsoft in the Balmer era.

It took them 3 YEARS to realize the Mac Pro was insufficient, and they let it languish while they ponder. They have more money and resources than anyone, yet they can't execute. Sad.

Thats what worries me too. It wasn't that long ago that Microsoft's attempts at hardware were laughable. They've turned that around big time, and in less time than Apple say they're going to need to develop this new Mac Pro. You have to wonder whether anyone who had a passion for Mac hardware is in fact long gone from Apple, and they're starting from scratch.

 

[KPOM]

Even drug addicts can't go cold turkey ;-} The issue is transition! Every time Apple has moved to a new interface they always carry the older interface forward as well. What happened here is they dropped multiple ports and gave us dongles! Very bad move!

To add to this they dropped MagSafe! So if you trip on the USB-C cord Opps! There goes your expensive laptop to the trash! Major mistake!

While I agree the MagSafe cable & the connector on the system needed improvement. Dropping it altogether was not the answer.

The only thing they did do right (finally) on the power brick is making it so you could replace the cable!

They ignored every single legacy port with the 1998 iMac. No one should have been surprised when they dropped legacy ports in the 2016 MacBook Pro. Perhaps as a 2015 MacBook owner I was less surprised than most but I was very surprised by the backlash to the MacBook Pro. Apple gave us 18 months notice what was about to happen. They were glowing about the USB-C port during the MacBook introduction.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

Listening, maybe. 2 years to resolve it, after admitting it? Fail. Just offer both right now. Use an old physical architecture with a new set of guts. THIS YEAR.

Step 1: Take a Hackintosh
Step 2: Make it work with iOS without patches and boot loaders
Step 3: While doing steps 1 & 2, get the fancy case designers to make it look beautiful and Apple-ish
Step 4: Sell it

That should take about... a month to get done, and another to test it, and another to have the contracts to get the parts. Heck, there are probably some coders at Apple that have already done this.

 

[KPOM]

Let's face it, Steve Jobs WAS Apple. He left them once, they almost went bankrupt. He's gone again, and (stock prices aside) Apple is slowly falling apart IMO. I don't want to admit it, but I think it's just not the same company without Steve. He lead the company to huge success, so it's going to take a while before they run it completely into the ground again. I hope I'm wrong.

I get the impression that Tim barely steers the ship and is more of a figurehead. He's probably so laid back compared to Steve that the staff are resting on their laurels and are not being productive. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and the internal reorganization has taken it's toll. This is one of the reasons why I think they have produced so little in addition to indecision about their product lines.

Tim Cook is a good CEO. He knows he isn't Steve Jobs and doesn't pretend he is or try to mimic him. He makes what he thinks are the best decisions.

What we need to remember is that even Steve Jobs would have struggled to maintain the level of growth Apple experienced the last few years into his death. They are the most valuable company in the world. It isn't easy to double from that.

 

[Theophil1971]

My read (between the lines... subjectively) on this is:

• In the Tim Cook era, Jony Ive was given a much larger role in product development than before
• This caused industrial design to trump product function to an even greater degree than in the past
• This meant a compromise in product performance at the high-end, affecting serious Pro users
• Therefore, most people (like me, honestly) have been pleased with the current line of Mac/Macbook products, but high end Pro users have not
• Apple is now recognizing this (finally, and good) and making an adjustment to rebalance form and function.

Hopefully, this will result in a long-term improvement overall, bringing the Mac ethos back into line with its historical success.

 

[rocknblogger]

My theory is that they are taking their time because the machine will be *THE* VR workstation as the technology starts to permeate. They are taking their time because thats the only technology that really matters on the horizon and what Apple does is sit around and let other people ship stupid things, learn from those mistakes, and then kill all of them in one blow.

Umm no. There's already solid workhorse workstations for VR and AR. Apple simply painted themselves into corner and bet on the wrong horse. They thought (in 2013) that multi-GPUs per machine is going to be the way to go forward. Instead it was the single powerful GPU that became the go to card and there was no way to upgrade the trash can due to thermal limitations.

The decision to bring out a newly designed Mac Pro was likely made within the last 6 months or so when they realized that the 2013 model was a mistake and could not be outfitted for future anything. So no, they are waiting to make THE VR machine that blows everything else away. They're simply bringing something back that will make different types of pros happy which may include VR but not as a goal. Basically what people have been begging for!!!

 

[tambur123]

It's funny.
The most valuable tech company needs 2 years to design a new desktop case.
Actually it's not funny, it's retarded.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Thanks but I do know what I speak. I do corporate IT work (for decades now) and we use POS Dells from the Precision and Latitude lines. Their machines are junk. So are their "servers". I use one daily and it's garbage with a four letter name that rhymes with Hell. The only good thing is that it has great battery life due to it having a huge battery.

Nothing Dell makes or has made is worthy of the cardboard box it ships in. Thankfully in the next 1-2 years Dell will be gone as we're going to a more open PC policy. I'd love a ThinkPad, Mac or the Elitebook x360.

Funny thing, I do corporate IT also, and have pretty much exclusively used Dell for the past, oh...10+ years. Been doing computers professionally for 30 years. Not surprisingly, my experience is the polar opposite of yours, and to this day rely on Dell for my clients office PC's, workstations, servers and equipment for the mobile users. Either you have some really bad luck or over the "decades" you just never learned how to do IT (pun intended) right. Obviously, I'm just one person with a very positive Dell experience. But the thousands of large corporations that use Dell would side with me, though. "Junk" they are not. I wish i had just ONE story to tell of a Dell server that died of old age, but I don't.

 

[richinaus]

I am 4 weeks away from moving my business to saying hello windows, goodbye mac........ after 20 years of supporting Apple.

If the Pro machines supported VR and were current, we would be making a big purchase plans. I can't wait until 2018 let alone 2019. All my competitors using PC's will be way ahead in the game, and that can't be allowed.

Promises promises but little in delivery and the waits are just too long.

 

[DevNull0]

Given a rough estimate of the length of time it normally takes to develop a project, it could be late 2018 or even 2019 before we see the machine.Aside from the Mac Pro, Holwerda also believes Apple is working on additional MacBook Pro models sans Touch Bar​

While this is fantastic news and definitely something I'm looking forward to, in the meantime, they could always dust off the old cheese grater box and re-issue it with some modern hardware to tide people over while they wait. It's not that hard to get OSX running on an Intel reference motherboard.

Apple saw a surge of orders for older MacBook Pros instead of the new model, and that, combined with the reaction to the LG 5K display and the "constant negativity" from professional users, led Apple to "double down on professional users."

If Apple would release the older MBP style with modern parts it would be an instant buy for me. I was tempted to buy one of the older machines after the new model was announced, but decided to hold onto my 2011 rather than pay original price for a 2 year old machine. I would love to see a new pro machine from Apple in the spirit of the ones they made just a few years ago.

 

[cult hero]

I agree. The view that iPads can completely replace Macs is very short sighted. Macs are required by many professionals and developers to create the apps and content sold on iTunes and the App Store. The Mac should be viewed by Apple as an investment in driving services growth, not a dwindling legacy product category.

I can see a lot of content creation and even a lot of office work move to something like the iPads. Office is on there and there are some great creative apps. I do think as time moves on more and more tasks are going to move to phones and tablets. For MOST users the closed nature of the OS and the isolation and such is actually a boon.

For developers? It's the opposite. And there's always going to be heavy lifting that requires a full fledged computer. Not everything lends itself to the workflows of tablets and phones.

Anyway, like I said, very happy to see this news overall.

I think Apple, and maybe the industry in general, is having a bit of an identity crisis at the moment. (And, I think this is a good sign that Apple needs to stop believing in its own hype.)

 

[Naimfan]

While this is fantastic news and definitely something I'm looking forward to, in the meantime, they could always dust off the old cheese grater box and re-issue it with some modern hardware to tide people over while they wait. It's not that hard to get OSX running on an Intel reference motherboard.

If Apple would release the older MBP style with modern parts it would be an instant buy for me. I was tempted to buy one of the older machines after the new model was announced . . . I would love to see a new pro machine from Apple in the spirit of the ones they made just a few years ago.

(Emphasis added.)

I agree.

Re the new 15" MB, I've purchased two, at different times, to try them out, and returned both.

Interesting that Apple thought it was "constant negativity" instead of what it was: honest feedback. While it's good that it admitted mistakes, it's still concerning that it seems so defensive.

 

[mso4]

Just last month I upgraded my 2013 MBA to a 2015 MBP with dual graphics. I had no interest in the new 2016 MBP with the usb-c. Likewise I'm not waiting for Apple's updated iMac. I just picked up 2 new iMac 27" to replace two older iMacs. Been a mac user since 2004 this was the first year I actually contemplated getting a non mac machine. I decided to stick around for one more round.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Apple didn't say it would take 2 years. People should re-read the interview.

 

[Binarymix]

This is about as modular as you can get.

Bring on the Mac Pro X(Serve)

 

[newyorksole]

Not a single one of these things will happen.

Lmaooo . So blunt, but so true.

 

[Col4bin]

We've only been demanding new MacPros for years. Now is only Apple supposedly listening? Talk about being tone def.