So, if there would be an i-Gadget fraction and a pro-fraction fighting over control, the i-fraction would be much stronger now, based on the successes of their consumer products.
It isn't so much i-gaget vs. "pro" faction. Mac OS X has recently been rumored to have been stripped of resources to prop up iPhone OS 4.x work.
At present it is a "new product category launch" vs. "old reliable cash cows" split.
The Mac Pro is just even further in the back of the bus. This is indicative by the fact that Apple lets the iMac encroach into the $2000+ price segment. Apple's general "mac prices shall remain fixed over time" is a bad enough impact on unit sales. The Mac Pro doesn't even get the whole space. If allowed to overlap or just occupied the whole space the line would be better off.
The key internal battle is more about which prices range relegated to. The problem is that Mac Pro is on a pricing death spiral. A relatively slow one, but spiral none-the-less. If the Mac Pro sold more units it would bring in more money and therefore could get more resources. As it is the unit count is likely going down ( imagine $999 Mac mini servers helped ratchet that pace up slightly) overall ( or at least lower growth that the other Mac Platforms).
It is a spiral in part because workload necessities for many folks isn't increasing as fast the computational power is. So an iMac with perhaps a second non-glossy monitor will work for some folks ( even if doing some color, but have bounded I/O needs). They can use the monitor with the computer guts attached to it as a secondary monitor (windows with email, IM, Quick Ref manuals, etc. ) and primary look at the external one.
News like the firing of 30 software engineers working on the Final Cut Studio suite fit into this image.
Was the all software folks and were they working on the core elements of the program ?
Apple without its high end computers is just another company. It's that high quality reputation that Apple still has from their workstations and the operating system that backs up their iGadget sales.
Once the pro side is gone, Apple's cool will fade.
This is part of the inflated importance being placed on the "Pro tools". A recent poll found that 90% of high school kids were planning to buy an iPod as their MP3 player. I can assure you that mental process was not "Wow the folks who do the backroom editing/composting on the latest movie I saw used a Mac Pro, so therefore I'm going to buy an iPod". It was far more likely "The iPod is cool and I want one too".
If folks were buying Mac Pros primarily because there were "cool" to buy. First, not sure why looking downcast on the "consumer market". That is exactly what the consumer market is usually driven to high heights on. Second, that subset of folks were not the core market in the first place. With the pricing fixed and new alternatives showing up over time those folks will fade away over time. If chasing after the "its trendy I'll buy it" it is far more effective to do that at more affordable price levels then the Mac Pro sells at if successfully done.
I hope this is just a phase as I don't really want to buy a Windows machine and work on the ugly interfaces of the Windows applications.
If the Mac Pro is burning down to a core set of users that tend to keep machines longer and run the same software over longer periods of time it won't hurt much if apple goes to a 12-16 month renewal cycle. If the arrival rate of customers isn't that high, it is going to be hard to justifying higher renewal rates for the Mac Pro.
I suspect it hasn't helped scheduling that new MacBook Pros just came out of the chute. The Mac OS X 10.6.x updates they needed probably got higher priority in the development/QA queue than the Mac Pro ones. You'd think Apple could walk and chew gum at the same time. It has been pretty obvious over the last couple of years that they can't. Or perhaps more precisely won't because want to bank more money. So keep some of the development/deployment swim lanes understaffed so that are "lean".
The major refresh of Intel Xeons only come at an arrival rate of once as year. Not sure why folks would expect the Mac Pros to arrive any faster than that. So if the minimum is 12 months then really just a little over a month late. "Stuff happens" from time to time. 3-6 months late ... yeah could see doom-and-gloom. Prior to 12 months that is more impatience than a solid indicator of behavior/intent.
It would help tremendously if Apple was quite so super duper secretive and clue more high end budget item folks in with NDAs about future hardware. Even if the dates don't leak out the "don't worry its coming" leaks would settle folks down.
