It's pathetic that the computer that used to be the "piece d'resistence", the Mac Pro, the top of the line Mac everyone really wanted but few could afford/justify, is the laughing stock of pro computers. Remember the PowerMac 9500? The PowerMac G4 and G4? The G5 cheese-grater, despite being unusual at first look, was THE MOST well designed PRO computer Apple ever made. Pros that needed it knew they needed it and they are still very capable when upgraded. And now we have had 4+ years of the black trash can. You could not pay me to use one of them and give up my Mac Pro 4,1.
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The Six Oldest Products Apple Still Sells Today
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I had the 9600. Incredible machine. Lots of power and expandability. 6 pci slots!! Very easy to upgrade and get at the internals. Still have it actually but the power supply is no good.
Good point. I’m always in favour of an internal PSU on their desktops.
Is anyone really surprised the Mac Mini and iPad Mini aren’t getting updates? One was a computer designed to get people to switch from PC and the other barely sold.
Maybe they should take the PSU out just to satisfy their fetish for thinness - they could shrink the size of the unit, while still keeping enough space to upgrade the thing. Or at least use some parts from less than 4 yrs ago...
SSD would be pointless for a network drive.
I don’t mind Apple not updating these products. Its that they still sell them and don’t mention they’re outdated slow etc.
I wish they would discontinue these products all together. New hardware is out all the time and not to update them is sheer laziness. Pure profits over, users. Even the iPhone X is a product pushed early with a one size clearly doesn’t fit all problem. The MacBook Pro is over engineered and too expensive. The Mac Pro is over engineered and too expensive to upgrade.
If Apple had stuck to the basics of upgrading products ever 6months it might be possible to recommend them. Sadly this is Apple of olds issues coming back from scully times.
I wish they would discontinue these products all together. New hardware is out all the time and not to update them is sheer laziness. Pure profits over, users. Even the iPhone X is a product pushed early with a one size clearly doesn’t fit all problem. The MacBook Pro is over engineered and too expensive. The Mac Pro is over engineered and too expensive to upgrade.
If Apple had stuck to the basics of upgrading products ever 6months it might be possible to recommend them. Sadly this is Apple of olds issues coming back from scully times.
In my opinion: because they did less.
I don’t pretend to know enough about switch strategy is better. But most people know that OS X Leopard was delayed because of the first iPhone.
Today, Apple engineers are simultaneously developing macOS, iOS, watchOS and tvOS. Plus, there’s got to be some resources put aside for iCloud and the self driving car platform.
Also, I feel each year we’re given new user facing features. The rumours are iOS 12 will focus on stability, and in response to that news I’ve already seen comments worrying about Apple’s lack of innovation.
What stands out for me is the hardware team continuing to develop things like Face ID, AirPods, or the rumoured health sensors for Apple Watch.
So that’s the difference, I think. Apple under Steve Jobs would have focused on one of the projects mentioned above and done it well. Under Tim Cook, they’re delivering more, but not as quickly - some things like Apple TV seem to move painfully slowly.
Also, because Apple in the 00s was coming back from near-death, most of the innovation was a new category. Seeing as iPhone meant lots of other categories (cameras, satnavs etc) were redundant, and possible future categories (like an interface for controlling your smarthome), there’s even less of a need for a whole new product. In other words, despite the technology and integration required, it’s easy to view FaceID as “less innovative” than something like iPod.
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It might relieve you to know they have hired in house creatives (the Pro Workflow team) so they can understand what Pros really need both from FCP and products like the Mac Pro:
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/04/05/apples-revamped-mac-pro-to-launch-in-2019/
Another lame delaying tactic, no different really than Tim Cook's earlier platitudes about valuing pro customers, or the importance of the mac mini. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that much of the engineering "workflow" at that big round building takes place on HP and Dell workstations.
They have no incentive to update Airport. And I don’t understand why some suggest it will be discon AFTER 802.11ax ? If anything what we need is a company that doesn’t spy on its customers and have privacy as well as their business model align to this fact. I don’t want a Router someday collect information about me.
MU-MIMO and mesh either doesn’t work as well or is not a proper standard.
802.11ax will hopefully fix all that. And since router market is getting much more high end pricing and models which actually play well into Apple’s hand.
MU-MIMO and mesh either doesn’t work as well or is not a proper standard.
802.11ax will hopefully fix all that. And since router market is getting much more high end pricing and models which actually play well into Apple’s hand.
You're right - vague comments like "we value our Pro users" does not guarantee the development of products like the Mac Pro. However, I think I disagree with you - I think Apple working hand-in-hand with Pros means they do care.
After all - as you've posted about before - iOS devices are incredibly important to Apple. As it's currently impossible to build iOS apps on iOS, you still need a powerful Mac.
This sums it up nicely. Does any consumer prefer Apple's approach in the past 5 years? The one where they are super secretive about their delayed update schedule and leave people wondering "it's been 2 years... surely they're going to update it this year"! And then another year or 4 continues to pass...
I respect Apple a lot but I miss when they felt the obligation to spec bump all of their machines up keep up with Intel and the rest of the industry. It's common courtesy in computer hardware...
On the flip side, releasing too many software updates too quickly had caused QC to go downhill. Take the user account glitches in High Sierra or the slew of bugs in iOS 11.2. I don't remember that many serious securty vulnerabilities when Apple waited more than one year to release Mac OS updates that consistently felt ready for prime time.
Im not bitter... but you have to admit that some of the recent Mac and iOS bugs were downright unacceptable.
Ok but we got the Touch Bar a couple years ago. Did you forget that? Or the co processors Apple has been working on. Did you forget about those? Or the display advancements on the iPad. Etc
I get what you're saying but my point is that people are just looking for specs and nothing else. Well its going to be a boring couple years because CPU's are stagnant, RAM is fast, SSD's are fast, etc. If Apple puts A series co processors into their Mac I feel that will be game changing and visionary as you call it. A series chips have neural networks built in and are extremely efficient. If Apple gets some devs to work on optimized apps that use the A processor and they can get multiple processors operating one computer without serious bottlenecks we can see a new performance gain. A series does mundane tasks, or ML and x86 is then tasked for other apps with x86 instruction sets and the GPU can handle the images or video/games. Co processors are the next logical step and Apple is leading there. But people will not care if they have a bias towards the fastest CPUs/GPU's and neglecting other things Apple has been doing.
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Video makers are indeed a small crowd. Are you saying that the percentage of video editors is significant enough to the number of people who use a computer for;
email, web ,etc
programming of any kind
web development (markup languages)
school (books, markup)
business (finances, excel)
photo editing (photoshop)
etc
The people above do not need anything faster than a MacBook Pro.
Lets focus on professionals though (a rookie YouTuber (for example) can probably edit something on their iPad. I actually edited on my iPhone 5 back in the day when me and my buddy did YouTube stuff) since they are the ones that will need the big toys.
The people who do;
people who run a server (mining, informatics)
people who edit complex video (4k/high frame rate/large amounts of video)
are a very small portion. Apple isn't about making different versions of their hardware (Mac Pro Server Edition, Mac Pro Video Edition) so it is indeed hard. For example, a server does not need a serious GPU unless serious math is needed (trig functions etc) but a video editing machine does. A video editing machine doesn't need the fastest CPU (it needs a capable one) while a server might be better with multiple cores. Im guessing its tough to find a balance and the cost down.
Also people are stupid. Apple likes to support their toys. Can you imagine stupid people modding their Mac then complaining to Apple? This is a new shift for them
I haven't heard anything bad about the iMac pro. Heres a review from a pro Google YouTuber that usually says bad things about Apple products (compared to Google products)
Yes, I think many people would buy the Mac Mini if Apple kept it up to date. Cook’s strategy seems to be to slowly obsolete and eventually kill off the non-pro Mac products one by one.
I agree with you.
But,
Wasn't the mini actually forced upon Jobs by a some of the board members and/or influential owners?
Apple never wanted to build the mini, but at least until 2012 it had its niche and lived quite nice.
I purchased a 2012 Mac mini for 300. Popped a 525GB SSD and 16GB of ram and it was still less than a new 2014 model and mine is a quad core i7 which the 2014s don’t have. So yes 6 year tech can still be useful for some people. When I run benchmarks it beats the 2014 Mac mini lol!
I remember seeing the ancient wired mouse with a $&$@ ball in an Apple store as recently as one or two years ago!
Apple has turned into a phone company. Well, phone and tablet company. They have ignored everything else. How many people would buy a 512g iPod Touch? I WOULD!!! How many people would have bought a 'real' Mac Pro? Something to carry on the name from the behemoth GIGANTIC 'classic'? I WOULD HAVE TRIED! They are taking the 'we create it and they will come' hubris for granted, and it's not working anymore. The Mac Pro was a disaster, and somewhere in the bowels of Apple, they damn well should have known! And making it look like a trash can was deliciously ironic. Kinda like the Zune coming out in, of all colors, brown...
For all their protestations that they 'can' innovate, post jobs, they aren't proving it... And the 'Pro iMac'? A feeble attempt to keep 'pro users' interested, as Apple fumbles their way through the iPhone X mess.
Apple needs to be more 'people centered', more 'elegance', and less 'We think this is what you want'. More computer centered, and less iPhone at the expense of everything else. And less paranoid about people upgrading their computers. The 'Classic Mac Pro' was the corporate dream. So upgradable. The 'New Old Mac Pro' was a dead end, and one that required a lot of expensive attachments to work in a heavy business environment for 'creatives' to use effectively. I don't have much hope for a 'New New Mac Pro' being anything other than a glued together hot mess of 'take it or leave it'. Sad...
My opinions are my own...