Steve Jobs Once Considered Killing Apple's Pro Products

[Larry-K]

When released- the "new" Mac Pro will inevitably be dismissed by critics as being "a bit rubbish". And for that reason will be cruelly nicknamed from day one as "The Dustbin Hoffmann"

Consequently, it may be one small step for (Hoff) Mann. But sadly will be a giant leap backwards for fan(boy) kind

I think the image speaks for itself.

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Exactly, they tout this as a "Pro" machine and marvel at the trash can design....
A pro needs a lot more stuff than the "Can" provides naked, hence you end up with something that looks like the picture.

But, you can always buy longer cables and find a place to hide it

That's an elegant solution I can Imagine Steve Jobs delivering on stage.

 

[12vElectronics]

People actually buy the Pro?

 

[mic j]

A pro line is needed. Us amateurs need something to aspire to. I bought Final Cut (the old version) and Aperture because it made me more "pro-like". And I bought back into Mac's because I knew they were heavily used by many pro's in the photography/video business. As an average consumer, I look and see what the pro's are using and tend to move that way for myself. Whether I really need it or not.

 

[apolloa]

Bit of a pointless article isn't it? I'm sure Steve thought about cancelling a lot of things?

Anyway, I don't give a monkey's nuts what people think, I friggin LOVE that new Mac Pro design and am more then mad enough to want one! It's the best looking desktop I've seen and damn so small with all that power... mmmmmmmm

 

[WardC]

Apple is becoming a consumer-oriented company with their focus on iPhones, iPads, and lower cost portables like the MacBook Air and 13" MacBook Pro. These are Apple's top selling products, by far!!

This was Steve's reasoning. The Mac Pros were just not selling, numbers in the thousands, not multi-millions.

That said, I think that Apple's pro products like the Mac Pro are among Apple's highest quality, best built machines around. The Mac Pro is like a tank compared to any similar offering like HP or Dell, and requires far less service in the end, and reliability is near 100% uptime on these machines.

Apple going for a more "hub-like" Pro computer offering external expandability instead of vast internal drivebays and swappable processors, PCIe slots, and graphics card options is a step towards a more consumer-like pro machine. Apple is getting rid of the tank and going for something more like what the G4 Cube was, essentially this IS what the new Mac Pro is...a 2013 G4 Cube (with dual intel processors). It will offer Pro power, but the internal expandability is practically nothing. I think the people in the Market for "this new" Mac Pro were wanting something with a little more expandability, knowing the machine would be smaller and more consumer-like. In My opinion, it is more a Pro-Mini than anything, Not a Mac Pro. We will just have to hold our breath to see what price Apple is asking for it!!

So, yes, this is the direction Apple is headed. Two other moves they made in this direction were nixing the 17" MacBook Pro, and not offering Matte display options for the Retina MacBook Pro...as well as nixing the 30" Cinema Display and all Matte Cinema displays as well. I don't like what Apple is doing here -- these were all great, top=notch, well engineered products. Guess Apple just wants to sell 10 gillion MacBook Airs and 100 million iPads instead and rake in the dough.

 

[donutbagel]

This one?

The one on the right costs a lot more and is a mess.

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The new Mac Pro ought to come with an external PCI card holder that can fit at least 2 cards and connect with Thunderbolt 2 for those who need it. There is no reason to kill PCI slots except to save space.

 

[Glassed Silver]

[...]
It has a modern and robust file system.
[...]

Are you serious?
If you want modern and robust, go ZFS.
Too bad that Apple doesn't want ZFS. Their explanation? They don't own it.

No ****, they don't own a lot of things in OS X.
I can see why they want to stay more on the independent side of things, but then up the game on filesystems, Apple.
For ****s sake, where's deduplication, data integrity checks and integrity checks of the checks (I'm not kidding you folks, ZFS does this), automatic error correction in the scale of files going totally bat **** crazy in bit rot hell, etc etc...

HFS+ is aging and it shows.
The sad part is, ZFS isn't exactly a very "young" filesystem itself, so.......
What the hell are you doing, Apple?

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[donutbagel]

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..

You don't need a router for just one Mac.

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Are you serious?
If you want modern and robust, go ZFS.
Too bad that Apple doesn't want ZFS. Their explanation? They don't own it.

Of course I'm all for ZFS if it's really better in every way, but HFS+ is still better than being stuck with NTFS.

 

[canman4PM]

Sometimes I worry that Apple doesn't understand it's about the ecosystem. The fact that one part of that ecosystem is smaller in terms of profit doesn't mean it's less important. If I'm not using a Mac for work (as a designer and an illustrator), the odds of me buying an iPhone or iPad or an AppleTV plummet sharply. I'm going to buy what plays well with what I use — period.

Well said. I got an iPod, that led me to an iMac. Now I'm on my 2nd iPhone and also have an iPad. I love how well they play together. And I got my mom similarly invested. AppleTV is probably around the corner.

Granted I'm not a pro user, but it would not take much for me to move up to a Mac Pro.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Well I'd consider the new design a death blow...

And my MP has gone OOW.

Why doesn't Apple allow Apple Care extensions beyond the first three years for 'Pro' products?

Oh never mind...

 

[Troneas]

i still can't believe this iTrash doesn't have a single USB port at the front. Not to mention the headphone jack or the power button.

 

[jyen]

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.

Right. Thanks for the correction.

 

[donutbagel]

i still can't believe this iTrash doesn't have a single USB port at the front. Not to mention the headphone jack or the power button.

If I had one, I'd put it backwards on my desk.

 

[xnu]

Too many resources? You are a freaking computer company... then license OSX so we can get hardware!!!!

 

[Troneas]

If I had one, I'd put it backwards on my desk.

ya except you'd have the nasty power cable popping out right in front of you.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

If I had one, I'd put it backwards on my desk.

And hide the logo? Blasphemy!!!

 

[fermat-au]

I was about to buy a Mac mini for a home server for graduation, but when I saw the pro at WWDC; I'm glad that I waited. This Pro seems to be exactly what I want and I didn't even think it was possible. I didn't even know how much I wanted something like this.

You may change your mind when the price is know, my guess is the new Mac Pro will be far more expensive than a Mac mini (and far more powerful)

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Too many resources? You are a freaking computer company... then license OSX so we can get hardware!!!!

Apple can't do that. Heck, look at the issues with Windows throughout history due to incompatible hardware. Heck, if anything it's been made worse by Windows 8!!!

 

[fertilized-egg]

Nothing surprising really. Steve Jobs and Apple had always been the consumer first company with the goal of making a personal computer for everyone that's easy to use. It always makes me smile and chuckle when I see the Mac users complaining about "toy" iOS devices considering Mac was considered "toy" back then.

Also Pro markets are famously demanding and complain a ton, yet I don't think they generate profits that's anywhere close to the level self-proclaimed importance you see reading writings on the internet.

I'm very glad it didn't happen and think it would have been a bad move on Apple's part. I believe Apple's pro products have more value to Apple than their immediate ROI and Steve might have lost sight of this.

I don't think he was thinking strictly in terms of ROI but the attention and human resources Pro products require that'll be taken away from other products. Jobs would have much rather used his best software guys on the iOS than the OSX server.

Pro is needed for the R&D that trickles down to the consumer products later. Need both to drive each other.

I don't really think that's the case anymore. If anything the iPhone and iPad influenced Macs much more than the other way around in recent years. Traditionally what "Pro" users are looking for have been a huge case with an expandability to cover all the edge cases and/or the fastest most power hungry Intel chips and AMD/nVidia graphic cards. None of them is particularly useful for the iOS devices, and less and less so for Macbooks as well.

HFS+ is aging and it shows.
The sad part is, ZFS isn't exactly a very "young" filesystem itself, so.......
What the hell are you doing, Apple?

Very much agreed. For something that's always been a problem in all sorts of problems for a while now, it's baffling Apple has refused to make the switch.

 

[donutbagel]

ya except you'd have the nasty power cable popping out right in front of you.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'd use a USB hub and keep it facing forwards. Luckily, my computer speakers have a headphone port on them. The Mac Pro should at least have a front-facing headphone port.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

"Apple is walking to a place that’s entirely new" with its new products, while "asking the pros to walk with them."

NO KIDDING...

Who will walk (off the plank?) for an Apple that seems adrift with Tim Cook at the helm? God give Tim Cook a bear hug because I wouldn't have wanted the job at all but Apple needs to bring in 'new ideas', and a respect for the 'pro' market that can rock Apple sales by having their logo on the tail end of some killer movies, rather than on the desk of a high schooler 'spanking his money' at the killer graphics on the iMac while he's surfing porn... Sorry, but the later just doesn't lead to many sales...

 

[dmax35]

And this matters because…?

Because he's a troll

 

[iSayuSay]

True, but are you able to get around that and see that it's an incredibly brilliant and functional design? I'm not sure why nobody else has ever thought of it. If one of the primary problems with high-performance computers is the heat it produces, why not design the thing like a wind tunnel to maximize the amount of airflow moving heat out of the system? Seems obvious now that it's been revealed, but all these years, it's been boxes with fans inside which makes little to no sense.

Wind tunnel design is fine. But surely they can make it looks a bit like a computer. Say something like PowerCube. Did anyone ever mistake it for a trashcan?

Why not make it silver aluminum as usual with glowing Apple logo on the front? Why not make it a bit like the new Airport extreme?

Current design would not blend well with other Apple products. And yes I care about the design because I'm paying premium for it. Otherwise a bare bone Xeon system laid in a cardboard would do fine for me, with half the price too.

 

[inkswamp]

Wind tunnel design is fine. But surely they can make it looks a bit like a computer. Say something like PowerCube. Did anyone ever mistake it for a trashcan?

Why not make it silver aluminum as usual with glowing Apple logo on the front? Why not make it a bit like the new Airport extreme?

Current design would not blend well with other Apple products. And yes I care about the design because I'm paying premium for it. Otherwise a bare bone Xeon system laid in a cardboard would do fine for me, with half the price too.

That's entirely subjective. I think it looks fantastic.

 

[cwkoller5]

Karma, Apple. Karma.

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels..."

When Apple was on the ropes, when Avid was going to bale, creative pros stood vigilantly by the platform. Now Apple has more money than GOD and can easily spare some of that to maintain the hardware (at least) for the hairy band of magnificent bastards that keep Apple honest and showcase the platform like an Indy 500 car.

God bless Steve and my he rest in peace, but that would have been the dumbest decision ever. Ever.