Steve Jobs Once Considered Killing Apple's Pro Products

[Glassed Silver]

"uselessly expensive ports on the back" ?
The above is just a typical example of an uneducated user who doesn't understand the value of Thunderbold or USB-3.

Well, "to each its own".

People only see the value of a product they are going to use.
It's no worth putting a Ferrari engine into a VW Golf, even if the added horse power might make many happy, some folks will be sorry to see their mpg go the way of the dodo.
In this case some users need a plethora of ports from the get go or CHEAP expansion.

Thunderbolt is expensive. Yes, some docking stations give you a good range of I/O, but when all you need is one port and you're supposed to buy enclosures or docking stations and whatnot for that need or when you need a lot of legacy ports due to your work, you're not gonna praise the song of "all new is better".

Yes, the I/O will make a lot of sense to a lot more people further down the road, but it's ignorant to believe that those professionals with niche needs or even common legacy needs voicing their disconcertment is somehow "not understanding".
Instead, you don't understand their workflows it seems.

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[BSben]

As it turns out Tim is not the enemy of the Pro user after all, and I think he is not the enemy of end users like me either. Unlike Mr Jobs, I think Tim Cook actually cares about the users.
I think he is actually good for Apple in this fairly difficult time. Apple is becoming more flexible (iPad updates, for example), but not desperate to a point where they start to show signs of fragmentation. The end user will still get great accessories just made for their device and their OS.
I think Tim can manage to get the Pro products running for some time to come.

 

[groovyd]

first but last

am glad they are taking their time between announcing this radical new design and actually releasing it... gives someone else time to copy it and pre-empt apple to their own launch. by then this will be the second computer on the market with this design.

 

[whtrbt7]

Apple's new line of Pro products are actually good IMO. The problem with the whole Pro line is that it does bring in much less revenue and profit with a higher R&D cost. The good news is that Apple is moving in a direction to make things easier and faster which is what most Pros want in their workflow. The biggest problem with their Pro market and their Pro development is the time it takes to create a new product or update their software which is aging quite rapidly. While the older software still works fine, they need to be updated to include more modern pro workflows.

 

[RobertMartens]

SO happy that didnt happen!

APPLE NEEDS PRO products!!!!!!!

Don't you mean Pros need Apple

 

[CaptHenryMorgan]

SO happy that didnt happen!

APPLE NEEDS PRO products!!!!!!!

No they don't. That's coming from a pro. We need them, they don't need us.

 

[Rogifan]

So much for "Steve wouldn't have..."

 

[donutbagel]

"Halo Effect"
All those pro people buy machines that are consistent.
If they were using Windows machines for editing, how much do you want to bet that the machine they take home (laptop) would be the same?

I started using a Mac for ProTools.
Now I own 5 Macs; an old MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, MacPro and two MacBook Air machines.

Now add that to the DP G4, the Mirrored Door Dp G4 and the Dual Processor G5 that are now retired.......

I'd say the "Halo Effect" worked pretty good for Apple to extract money from my wallet.

Yeah, go ahead and dump the pro line.......

This is what I was thinking. I remember when very few people I knew used Macs except for me and the people I knew who used Macs professionally then got other Apple products.

 

[Dudical]

I wish Apple would have broken off or sold the Pro division, and licensed OS X and Mac technologies to them in exchange for non-compete in the consumer market.

 

[RobertMartens]

I think he is actually good for Apple in this fairly difficult time.

The tech industry is ALWAYS difficult. Which easy time was there? You probably mean the five minutes after they have just released something amazing. But five minutes after that the worry begins.

 

[Glassed Silver]

i thought they already got rid of all their pro products?
or maybe i've just been reading the mac pro forum too much

Nope, you should go to the very impatient (and rightly so) Aperture folks like me to get your share of "Apple doesn't think about us".

Apple has REALLY been slacking in delivering to photographers timely - or at all - for a long time now.
I hope that when they come out with a new Aperture version they learned from their FCP X and Logic X debuts and make a smooth first impression.
Yes, .0 releases have bugs, that will be okay, but there are some MAJOR problems in Aperture that need addressing and also I think it's time to step up the game.
I'm looking at Lightroom and what's keeping me from switching over is

a) Adobe. They might not make Lightroom SaaS, but I don't feel like overly supporting them anymore
b) library is already built in Aperture - including all the non-destructive edits I don't want to lose
c) workflow is still better in Aperture (waiting times for edits aside that is, I'm talking about the pure GUI and general behavior)

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[iSee]

I'd say the ONLY reason to buy a Mac at all is because there is soe software that only runs on Macs, like Logic, Final Cut and so on. If they kill of that what is the point of a Mac. Just and expensive way to run a web browser. I'd buy a Google Chrome book.

Yeah, software like, you know, OS X
Really, very few want a computer only for browsing the Internet and running web apps, so there's not much use for chrome books. They aren't actually cheaper than computers and tablets running full operating systems and native apps, just less capable.

Also I don't think you want to bash the hardware too much... do you remember what laptops were like before the MBA?

 

[JustinGN]

We're fine with the walk; it's the fact that we're blindfolded and stepping on rakes that gets to us.

Welcome to how IT feels. In all seriousness though, this was a great read, and I admire their choice of path (though I still have my concerns...). Hopefully they execute it well enough to keep their Pros, while bringing in an entirely new generation of loyalists to their Professional machines.

 

[flat five]

A pro needs a lot more stuff than the "Can" provides naked

yeah.. like a keyboard and a mouse and speakers and displays and external storage and a laptop and a printer and a router and all this other crap i got laying around here.. i sure wish it was the good old days when all of that was inside one box..

 

[scottsjack]

I think that is ridiculous. We demand quality (not having to buy a new PC every freakin' year) and only Apple has provided. Not only is it better looking and better working, it's price per year of functionality is way lower than any cheap PC crap.

Not true. There are some excellent PCs out there. They're not the low budget trash you find (and get purchased) from Best Buy, Sears or Walmart. The good ones are either premium models or business machines.

As a small example we use Acer Veritons at work. They are work-all-day, solid machines with three-year warranties.

For less than the price of a good mini you can get a 3.4GHz i7 quad with a real desktop hard drive, eight USB ports and a couple of slimline PCI-e slots. Sure, they're not for video/movie people but for about $800 the top of the line Veriton is a great choice.

Another choice would be HP's ProDesk 600 or EliteDesk 800. They cost $100 or so more than the Veriton but offer a lot more.

I love my Macs but they are stupidly expensive for the components used. Macs are all about the OS and the ecosystem.

 

[Catalyx]

It still looks like a trash can or an air purifier.

Better than a cheese grater

 

[Liquorpuki]

It still looks like a trash can or an air purifier.

Trash can that looks like new Mac Pro causes a stir in Japan

 

[eltaurus]

that will effect there consumer products as well .. When Pro's will leave apple because kill a major product .. it will create negative marketing

Remember : Consumer come to Pro's for suggestions.

 

[mbrannon47]

Yes, sometimes the option is to kill off a product segment. Apple's done that many times--it's what the analysts refer to as cannibalization.

That's not at all cannibalization. Cannibalization is when a product or service a company offers ends up eating at the sales of another product or service the same company offers. For example, when the iPhone came out, many people made it their primary music player as well, meaning fewer iPod sales. We would say that the emergence of the iPhone as a capable music player cannibalized iPod sales. Another popular example of cannibalization is iPad/MacBook. If you consider the iPad a PC, in Q4 2012 the iPad made up for 1 out of every 6 PCs sold. There are certainly consumers out there that are purchasing iPads instead of MacBooks. The same can be said for the entire tablet market.

 

[flat five]

Henh??

He very definitely did kill Apple's pro products. He let them wither on the vine.

I have pros and was directed by senior management to buy them Apple products.

My response was simple: I can't. They're not made anymore.

Show me the laptop with workstation graphics or the desktop with a modern processor and chipset. You can't.

huh? did you get fired? or are you not telling the whole truth?

i'm pretty sure if i hired you and said "buy a bunch of apple stuff and hook it up" ...then you said "i can't"

you're outta there.. of course it can be done.. plenty of other people can do it.

just kinda a bad attitude to have for the field (i'm assuming) you're in.

 

[scottsjack]

Nope, you should go to the very impatient (and rightly so) Aperture folks like me to get your share of "Apple doesn't think about us".

Apple has REALLY been slacking in delivering to photographers timely - or at all - for a long time now.

True. I was all gotta-be-Apple and bought A3 when it first shipped. What a miserable piece of trash. Sure, it got better after a year or two.

I had fairly large Aperture libraries. They were slow, beachballing sloths whether running on my C2D mini or on my 2010 Mac Pro. I finally trashed the libraries and said no more.

Photoshop has always been my main software. CS6 is so much more capable than Aperture other for cataloging. When Adobe began the rent-me-forever craziness I upgraded my W8 machine from CS3 to CS6. Now I'm set for quite a while. Should either Mavericks or Windows 8.1 turns out to be trash I can still get my work done on the other platform. Platform independence rules!

 

[Dudical]

I'd say the ONLY reason to buy a Mac at all is because there is soe software that only runs on Macs, like Logic, Final Cut and so on. If they kill of that what is the point of a Mac. Just and expensive way to run a web browser. I'd buy a Google Chrome book.

I use a Mac because:

• I prefer a *nix environment.
• I still need to run Photoshop, Reaper, and plugins that you can't run on that other *nix OS.
• It has a modern and robust file system.
• Preferences live in an easy to access location, can be copied from system to system, and edited with a text editor.
• A proper bash shell is installed by default, as is SSH, Python, etc... No force-feeding your OS a terminal environment (Cygwin...)
• Homebrew package management.
• And when you're not nerding out and using *nix to its full potential, you can use beautiful software like Daisydisk and Genie.

But yeah, if you're just web browsing and stuff like that, just get whatever's cheapest. Chrome in full screen mode is the same thing no matter what computer you're using.

 

[tripleg]

This one?

Seriously, that jumbled mess of wires and boxes on the right does not look like an Apple solution.

 

[Moonjumper]

I guess that's what makes you two qualified to not only run a Fortune 500 company but grow it Fortune 5?

Pro hardware is expensive for a reason: high end parts that have to be tested in-house for performance, low volume sales, more demanding customers and support options, expensive R&D.

How much money does Apple make from Mac Pros & 17" Mac Book Pros. Most "pro" level creative work done on Macs on the planet are done on 15" MacBook Pros and iMacs.

My point still stands though. All reports were that the Mac Pro sales were at unsustainably low levels. Making the case smaller is unlikely to change that.

But a clever redesign that has reduced the case component numbers dramatically, and therefore had an effect on production costs, possibly making it viable to put lower end components in the base model. And then testing, support infrastructure and R&D costs are spread across more sales in a virtuous circle.

 

[ActionableMango]

Also, seriously, "GTX 680 FTW"? I felt like a loser while I was browsing for my GPU because of how cheesy the names are. The FTW on that GPU's name does really stand for "for the win".

I feel your pain! I shall hide the box in shame!