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The End of Apple's Professional Presence Is Here
- Thread starter theusualsuspect
- Start date
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It's hard to say what Apples up to. While all corporations goal is to maximize profit, Apples extreme obsession with money clouds their ability to think clearly. Obviously being wildly successful most of what they do is working as designed. Yet there are many clues to suggest the professional computer user is an endangered species.
Announcing the "post PC era", diluting OS X with consumer focused iOS elements, and on and on, the list is long.
If Apple has no intentions of slowly abandoning professionals I will be very surprised.
Announcing the "post PC era", diluting OS X with consumer focused iOS elements, and on and on, the list is long.
If Apple has no intentions of slowly abandoning professionals I will be very surprised.
I actually believe this to be the opposite. Most people I know who "switch to mac" find it difficult having used a windows OS all their life.
iOS is actually bringing more people to their MacBooks etc because the OS becomes familiar, less daunting and an easier transition having used it on their phone and in iTunes which is the only exposure these large masses have ever had to it.
Very clever indeed.
I agree with all points made. The concern is will they?
The question is, why dilute OS X? Yet that said, perhaps Jobs proclamation of a post PC era was posturing and to lay claim that he declared it first. Feeding his ego was always number one.
I'm thrilled that the new captain of the ship is Tim Cook. A refreshing change at just the right time. A man who both knows how to listen, and execute. It's a sign that the consumer will be heard with fresh ears & a more open mind.
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Very astute observation.
First off, I doubt anyone other than the board, the executive leadership team and project directors know the fate of any given market. Second, Apple is a business, if the market exists and they can make it profitable they will have a presence there. Third, the paradigm of computing is changing.
Computing power has grown so much in the past decade. Perhaps Apple sees the future as not being a room filled with powerful workstations churning out video but something else entirely. They may or may not be right, but lately they have lead the makets to their new strategy rather successfully each time.
Lets be honest, A Mac Pro is a nice machine. Its logic board while dated is still solid. Its CPU also dated is still very solid and performs well. Apple does not need to be bleeding edge with the raw specs. It just needs to be a solid performer. Will you get better benchmarks on another system? Sure, but what does that get you in real world performance? Not too much in many cases. Plus you have to change your work flow.
As for the software I cannot say much. I have used previous versions of FCP and they were awesome. Those versions still work although you cannot buy them. I have not yet tried the new version, but I hear mixed things. That said, a mac Pro running FCP and Snow Leopard from 1 year ago still works. You do not have to upgrade. What compelling reason forces a company to upgrade? You may WANT to upgarde and be the latest but if you had all the features you needed before then there is no rational reason to change now. I am sure FCP will evolve and grow as a product.
Computing power has grown so much in the past decade. Perhaps Apple sees the future as not being a room filled with powerful workstations churning out video but something else entirely. They may or may not be right, but lately they have lead the makets to their new strategy rather successfully each time.
Lets be honest, A Mac Pro is a nice machine. Its logic board while dated is still solid. Its CPU also dated is still very solid and performs well. Apple does not need to be bleeding edge with the raw specs. It just needs to be a solid performer. Will you get better benchmarks on another system? Sure, but what does that get you in real world performance? Not too much in many cases. Plus you have to change your work flow.
As for the software I cannot say much. I have used previous versions of FCP and they were awesome. Those versions still work although you cannot buy them. I have not yet tried the new version, but I hear mixed things. That said, a mac Pro running FCP and Snow Leopard from 1 year ago still works. You do not have to upgrade. What compelling reason forces a company to upgrade? You may WANT to upgarde and be the latest but if you had all the features you needed before then there is no rational reason to change now. I am sure FCP will evolve and grow as a product.
I have no idea how and why people make this assumption and connection. Diluting OS X? How and where?
The new implementation of expose and replacement of spaces is, frankly, much better and I find it easier to work with and much more logical and, for want of a better word, cleaner.
I don't see exactly what has Apple done in Lion to implement "consumer elements" or how any changes in Lion should these impact a person to do their job i. All of the people that complain and sing this song list spaces and expose as the number one "issue" yet they never expand on how and why this is actually impacting them. To then make the connection that this shows Apple is "abandoning the pro market" is ridiculous in my mind.
Perhaps I am missing something.
I am too lazy to find the correct threads yet, but the ones I have seen complaining about Exposé and Spaces did go into detail a fair bit.
I guess I can see nothing wrong in going from this fairly complex visualisation of my work spaces, which is okay and can be worked with
PS: Please use your imagination and imagine this on a 1920 x 1200 display, which helps a lot in SL, but in Lion it is still ****ed up, ahem, turded.
It may or may not have the highest markup (I suspect the Quad core SP's are at 235%, but the other MP's aren't that high).
But even if a product is technically profitable, there are other reasons to EOL it. Particularly whether or not that product has any growth or not, and how the ROI calculates out (growth has an effect here when looked at long term, but even the short-term could be horrible if there's not many units sold, but a lot of R&D funds spent to create it).
For example, lets say Apple sells 50k Mac Pros per year, with an avg. profit of $1000 per (generates $50M). But say the iPad sells 5M units per year, at a profit of $250 per (generates $6.25B).
Now with that kind of profit difference to the bottom line, the ROI on what they spent on the iPad is much higher than the MP, and it's a growing market. And when you consider the workstation market in general is in decline due to more powerful CPU's (not everyone needs ECC, so they can skip out on Xeons), it may be at the point it's more attractive to EOL the MP and use the development funds on a consumer device that will generate much higher returns for the same period.
Don't worry, my friend's cousin's next-door neighbor says it'll be replaced with the iPad Pro by next Tuesday for sure.
I do not believe we're ever going to see another big giant shiny t0w3r of Heavy Metal called a "Mac Pro" again. I'm equally sure that Apple will replace it with something similar geared towards the high-end/content-creators. At least, I certainly hope so. Although in reality, I don't know, and neither do 99% of the people who work for Apple, or 100% of the people who post here ... all of us are just talking and sharing opinions.
The only individuals who would be clued into this plan are senior management and the engineers who are directly working on it. Having friends who are engineers in 3 other departments, will not get you any special secret information with regards to what other projects Apple is working on. They are heavily compartmentalized on a need-to-know basis internally.
I do not believe it is in Apple's best interest to completely jettison and abandon the high-end; I also absolutely do not believe it is in Apple's best interest to continue producing the current "Mac Pro" as is.
I'm not sure I understand your point but I think you are saying:
1. If Apple leaves the Pro market, Pro Users will have to buy non-Apple Pro stuff.
2. Pro's will then buy other non-Apple stuff (home PCs, non-iPhones, etc)
3. The Pro's will no longer recommend Apple stuff to others.
4. This will be a big deal for Apple because Pro's are influential.
If any of this was true why did Apple have single digit market share in late 1990s and early 2000s when all Apple had was the Pro market? Following your logic, those influential Pro's should have been evangelizing Apple gear to everyone they know and Windows would have never taken off...Heck the Newton would have been a success...
1. If Apple leaves the Pro market, Pro Users will have to buy non-Apple Pro stuff.
2. Pro's will then buy other non-Apple stuff (home PCs, non-iPhones, etc)
3. The Pro's will no longer recommend Apple stuff to others.
4. This will be a big deal for Apple because Pro's are influential.
If any of this was true why did Apple have single digit market share in late 1990s and early 2000s when all Apple had was the Pro market? Following your logic, those influential Pro's should have been evangelizing Apple gear to everyone they know and Windows would have never taken off...Heck the Newton would have been a success...
I believe Apple will drop the Mac Pro within 5 years. There is no doubt in my mind.
You all can joke about the "my-friend's-roommate's-brother" nature of this specific thread but you can not deny that computing is moving beyond super-powerful desktop/workstation machines and to devices. Especially the type of computing that Apple cares about and wants to bring to the world.
Mac Pro's are trucks. Most people do not need a truck. Steve said so.
Apple has very strong economic and philosophical reasons for dropping Pro's. First, you can not ignore that fact that the market is tiny. It is a drop in their bucket now. The R&D and support costs to develop Pro HW and SW just does not bring a high enough ROI.
Second, think of what Apple wants to do. Since the beginning with Apple II and especially since the Mac...this is the computer for the rest of us. Apple wants to remove the file system. They want to elminate expansion ports. Why? Because Apple is trying to make computing devices that are as easy to use as your toaster.
I don't know how you can't see this coming. Shake, XServe, Lion, FCP X, iPad. Tim Cook just said on the earnings call that they feel the tablet market can be bigger than the PC market.
Forget about the philosophical side for a minute and go back to the economics--If this was your money, your business, which market would you go after?
And btw, Pixar does it rendering on a huge server farm of commodity hardware. Very similar to Google.
You all can joke about the "my-friend's-roommate's-brother" nature of this specific thread but you can not deny that computing is moving beyond super-powerful desktop/workstation machines and to devices. Especially the type of computing that Apple cares about and wants to bring to the world.
Mac Pro's are trucks. Most people do not need a truck. Steve said so.
Apple has very strong economic and philosophical reasons for dropping Pro's. First, you can not ignore that fact that the market is tiny. It is a drop in their bucket now. The R&D and support costs to develop Pro HW and SW just does not bring a high enough ROI.
Second, think of what Apple wants to do. Since the beginning with Apple II and especially since the Mac...this is the computer for the rest of us. Apple wants to remove the file system. They want to elminate expansion ports. Why? Because Apple is trying to make computing devices that are as easy to use as your toaster.
I don't know how you can't see this coming. Shake, XServe, Lion, FCP X, iPad. Tim Cook just said on the earnings call that they feel the tablet market can be bigger than the PC market.
Forget about the philosophical side for a minute and go back to the economics--If this was your money, your business, which market would you go after?
And btw, Pixar does it rendering on a huge server farm of commodity hardware. Very similar to Google.
I wonder if Apple sites around the "big" table and plays the same theory-crafting games as the OP.
Personally I don't see a rational argument for eliminating the MP since there is no logical replacement option.
Personally I don't see a rational argument for eliminating the MP since there is no logical replacement option.
Sure, the big money comes from the consumer stuff, but pro equipment serves a larger purpose. For one, pros are influencial and if you get them all saying bad things about Apple products then that will have a negative influence well beyond their numbers.
The other is that it is good to have a flagship. GM makes a Corvette not because it makes a ton of money, but because it shows that the company is capable of more than compact sedans. IBM may not make a lot of money from a handful of supercomputers, but it certainly gives them notoriety beyond their normal products.
Apple should keep a strong high-end presence even if it is not immediately profitable.
The other is that it is good to have a flagship. GM makes a Corvette not because it makes a ton of money, but because it shows that the company is capable of more than compact sedans. IBM may not make a lot of money from a handful of supercomputers, but it certainly gives them notoriety beyond their normal products.
Apple should keep a strong high-end presence even if it is not immediately profitable.
Hey, if you're going to post this sort of BS please throw in a few "gadgets" and "fanbois". Will make your thesis much more believable.
cheers
JohnG
apple is for apple; aka stockholders
IMO the OP made some very good points and could very well be spot on. Apple has done things before that angered "portions" of their user base. Arguably the last of which was to eliminate the optical drive from the Mini. When it's time to go, well, then may the tech rest in peace. The fact is, if Apple corporate see this as the time to wind down the Pro desktop then that is exactly what they're going to do and there will be no turning back the hands of time. I remember my last high end HP workstation running the HP-UX operating system and HP's best native graphics. Mine was used and it still cost $25K but PC's were starting to come on strong and were no longer just glorified calculators they used to be. You could buy a hot rod PC (like a 2MB video card?!) for a measly $3-5K.
It's just the natural progression of technology. I don't see any of this as troll bait at all and IMO valid points have been made for either way it goes. Hopefully Apple keeps an eye on this site as much as everyone suspects they do!
IMO the OP made some very good points and could very well be spot on. Apple has done things before that angered "portions" of their user base. Arguably the last of which was to eliminate the optical drive from the Mini. When it's time to go, well, then may the tech rest in peace. The fact is, if Apple corporate see this as the time to wind down the Pro desktop then that is exactly what they're going to do and there will be no turning back the hands of time. I remember my last high end HP workstation running the HP-UX operating system and HP's best native graphics. Mine was used and it still cost $25K but PC's were starting to come on strong and were no longer just glorified calculators they used to be. You could buy a hot rod PC (like a 2MB video card?!) for a measly $3-5K.
It's just the natural progression of technology. I don't see any of this as troll bait at all and IMO valid points have been made for either way it goes. Hopefully Apple keeps an eye on this site as much as everyone suspects they do!
Rossetta is more complicated than people give it credit for. It means that every change Apple wrote for Intel OS X would have to be back ported to PowerPC and tested. It's not just an emulator, the frameworks and all UI changes would have to be back ported.
iOS is certainly getting a lot more attention these days... but as for your source... Mac Pros are used pretty heavily internally at Apple, and by iOS developers. I'm not sure where this "Mac Pros are on the outs" is coming from.
A lot of iOS developers I know use MacBook Pro's or mini's. Not indicative of a Mac Pro extinction, just right now there isn't much direction on where the Mac Pro can go. At this point we are waiting on intel, AMD/nVidia (more intel than anything else).
The Mac Pro is still a solid machine and will continue to have its place, at least until Thunderbolt and others mature to more logical and cost effective workflows.
The Mac Pro is still a solid machine and will continue to have its place, at least until Thunderbolt and others mature to more logical and cost effective workflows.
I think this is correct.
If Apple can give you a what is essentially a screen that is connected to a server by the web that contains your OS and all your licensed software, there is no longer a requirement to purchase parts from more than one supplier for CPUs/SOCs/screen panels/memory, saving them a colossal amount of money.
It would be like OnLive, but for your entire computer system.
I'm not saying I'd prefer this, but I think it's likely the outcome of whatever Apple is working towards.
And let's not forget about the 'halo effect'. iPad and iPhone are really entry ways for apple to get into more professional environments. Making it more likely that iMacs and Mac Pros will find their ways to places that had probably not even considered an Apple based environment before.
Even though apple has discontinued certain hardware and software products third parties have stepped up and met the challenge, be it promise with the Xserve replacement or others.
Right now Apple is setting itself upfield some big plays in various aspects of computer technology and business. Technology and liberal arts are coming to a head in a lot of fields at the moment.
Even though apple has discontinued certain hardware and software products third parties have stepped up and met the challenge, be it promise with the Xserve replacement or others.
Right now Apple is setting itself upfield some big plays in various aspects of computer technology and business. Technology and liberal arts are coming to a head in a lot of fields at the moment.
Actually, the logic your using here does not work in reverse. The Pros might be necessary for the consumer market, however the Pros might also NOT be sufficient for the consumer.
So, its entirely possible that while having the pros in the 90's, Apple lacked other aspects unrelated to the pros that prevented a greater share of the consumer market. Most notably this would be simple product lines designed for the consumer market (iPhones, iPads and what not). Now however, its entirely possible that if you don't have the Pro end driving innovation of new software and hardware on the Apple platform that the consumer market share will actually suffer from it.
This might not be true 5 years from now, but I do believe its true today, and will be through out at least 2012 and into 2013. We just don't have the infrastructure and technology to entirely move away from workstations. One day we'll be able to plug into a cluster with our iSomething and do all our video rendering and have it pop up on our 3D TVs, or whatever else. But we're not there yet. We still need the big, powerful, local machines. This vision of the Pro-less market requires small/home businesses to have Gig-Eithernet connections and cheap access to clusters for computing and data storage. Right now, its just not there. And for at least the near future, I think it would be unwise for Apple to push small/home businesses that need workstations into Window/Linux.
Also, a personal anecdote: I work in academic research. My lab uses Macs because we need Unix or Linux and our IT only supports Windows or Mac, not Linux/Ubunutu. So, I work entirely on Macs, specifically the 2010 base DP Mac Pro. That was enough to push my personal home computer purchases to Macs, which will likely also push me into an iPhone once I need a new phone. It just makes life easier dealing entirely with only one platform. Thus, the trickle down effect from the pro market is real, at least for me and probably quite a few others.
It depends on what you develop. I use a Mini at work, but at home I have a Mac Pro, and in my last development job I have a Mac Pro. I know many other developers with a Pro.
If you're targeting low end iOS applications, a lower end Mac will do you fine. But higher end developers who need faster compiles and better graphical performance need Mac Pros.
Mac Pros are more responsive when debugging, and can compile faster. Something I definitely notice when programming on a Mini.
I'm assuming that we we say Pro folks are talking about Creative Professional, as that is where the thread started. I've never seen any evidence that Apple's success in this market has had any significate impact on their other products selling well. The math just doesn't even come close to working out.
I think people are overstating the influence of the Creative Pro market.
Many used to argue that Mac OS was better than Windows up to Win '95. But Windows still gained. Where was the influence of the Pro's? The real influence during the PC era was corporations/enterprise.
What happened was that normal folks (not movie editors or designers) had to work on Excel spreadsheets and Word docs at home. So, they bought a Windows PC for home. Didn't matter how "cool" or "insanely great" the Macs of the time where.
In the PC-era Apple lost the corporate market so it went after Creatives to make a buck. It needed a niche.
Now Apple simply doesn't need Creative Pros. The revenue brought in both directly and indirectly (via some magic halo effect of creative pro's telling others about Apple products) is microscopic compared to first iPod and now iPhone and iPad revenue.
You mean to tell me that the iPhone and iPad would not have been just as successful if Final Cut Pro or Logic were never Apple produts? Or if the Mac Pro never existed? I seriously doubt that.
I'm not arguing that the Pro market is going away entirely. I am saying that it will drastically decrease over time and that it is not a market Apple cares to particpate in. They will let Dell/Lovenov/Acer/ASUS have the workstation/desktop (aka 'PC') market.
Apple has the data to know that losing this market won't even make them blink. One week's sales of iPads and iPhones will make up for a year of Mac Pro's and FCP.