Some Thoughts
In the days of yore, Apple did not have the cash cow of the iPod, iPhone and iPad to boost its sales figures. Apple needed to sell products. Those products were Macs mostly. To do that they used their strengths if controlling the hardware, software and OS.
Buy buying the foundation apps that led to iTunes, FCP, Logic, etc. Apple strategically set themselves up to make really good value for the customer.
At the time, video editing suites were clumsy and expensive and prone to obscure technical and networking issues, etc. Along come a powerful digital (the new emerging medium) package that in relative terms was cheap, fast and had some exciting new features. It took off, and sold many a Mac Pro.
In time, they developed a rather nice suite of Pro software packages. And sold a modest quantity of Pro Macs. Then came the iDevice phenomemen and the app store.
For a business, they look at strategies like repeat sales, halo effects, product lifecycles, etc.
How often did a studio replace mac Pros and software? Every 2 - 3 years? What were the sales of these purchases? What were the profit margins? Now look at the iDevice family. Repalced/upgraded oftn, many times annually. Huge halo effect with app store and music store, high margins.
From a pure business resource and startegy viewpoint, Apple put resoruces towards the market (consumers) and the products (iDevices) that made them money.
The old strategy sold Macs but was a small portion of averall sales.
Look at the most recent sales. Mostly laptops and iMacs for the hardware side and the iDevices. The Mac Pro is withering on the vine.
Personally I am sad that the Pro is marginalized. I think it could be an awesoem product and I would love for a mid level tower, slots for expansion, updated graphics cards, etc. but iMac proce range. But I am fairly sure that product is not a market space Apple wants to be in.
With the Mac Pro being a moderate option and not coming out with cutting edge updates, it can be inferred that the Apple stratgy is to not invest much R&D into this market.
Jumping back to the Pro software, Appel had to ditch some legacy code and bagage to make the move to Intel, 64 bit, Lion, etc. They rewrote FCP into FCP X. For some its great. For others, not so much. Business wise for Apple, the dollars and cents of the lost sales and platform switchers is barely a blip. At this point they still sell Mac Pros and FCP X, etc. and will do so until sales become low enough to abandon the product lines.
Perhaps they ar cooking up updates in the labs at Apple HQ. perhaps just a programmer and a few interns maintain the code. I don't know. But it seems safe to say the priority of Apple is not these Pro apps at this time.
We can all be sad that Apple's business decisions have left us with a less than desirable product, but the reality is that Apple will do as a company what it feels is best. If they abandon small segments, then they have every right to.
We can hope an enterprising third party will rise to the challenge and fill the void. Fortunately there are alternatives for professionals that use these systems. None may be ideal or what they wanted, but no one will starve for lack of tools.
Steve and Apple seem to have a road map to the future. We may happily buy into their vision, or not, time will tell. Perhaps the legacy of pro machines and editing software was not part of that vision. But I am confident if the Mac Pros were flying off the shelves, then it would be a product that Apple paid more attention to. That said if they paid more attention to it, perhaps they would fly off the shelves. Chicken or the egg.
