MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

[Peace]

His computer is not on his desk. In a photo from same session from another angle

( Look at the 3rd photo here https://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/11/15/an-inside-look-at-steve-jobs-home-office/ )

The computer is sitting on the floor, up against the outer wall, under the desk down by his feet. The notion it is up high were he can daily worship its beautiful shape doesn't pass muster.

P.S. The Genelec monitors , which possible cost a couple thousand, are yet again indicative of "expensive because I can" rather than some deep seated need. Probably a Power Mac G4 ( a flavor of cheesegrater design, but not the Mac Pro. )

A. I never said "His computer" was on any desk.
B. I did say cheesegrate Mac Pro "design" was.

 

[barmann]

There is no "cheesegrater Mac Pro" in this picture. The picture was taken in 2004. The "cheesegrater" didn't exist unitil 2006. Soo..... Jobs is using the technology available at the time; not necessarily what he wanted, but what he could get.

Basically, Jobs was running a Hackintosh , correct ?

 

[filmak]

Probably a Power Mac G4

G5, please.

 

[deconstruct60]

A. I never said "His computer" was on any desk.
B. I did say cheesegrate Mac Pro "design" was.

The scale model is being used as a bookend/doorstop. it is playing a functional role of being big and heavy enough to prop up what he wants propped up. (some kind of picture/poster board on his desk). [ From the alternative angle I posted this design can't be seen. ]. If jobs had a 1/3-1/4 model of G5 and 1/2-1/3 scale models of PowerBook , Macbook, iMac , and Mac Mini then quite likely the best book-end for most books/paper probably would be the PowerMac. It is bigger and heavier. He would hardly hate it as it served that function better. However, that isn't saying much in the context of this particular forum where folks talk about the computer that is a Mac Pro. Bookends internal layout and structure are immaterial to their primary function (as long as doesn't impede being heavy and structurally sound enough).
[doublepost=1519653195][/doublepost]

Basically, Jobs was running a Hackintosh , correct ?

No. "Cheesegrater" is an implication that if using aluminum the design uses holes drilled through aluminum on the front as the primary characteristic. That didn't start with the Power Mac.

[doublepost=1519653415][/doublepost]

G5, please.

Sorry, yes a typo; G5. ( had just looked at pictures at lowendmac site on the PowerMac sequence and G4 was last one looked at. )

 

[deconstruct60]

...
Apple and I think even the entire Silicon Valley was founded by tinkerers. And tinkering needn’t be just about hardware.

Software developers tinker with development kits all the time ( how many of them would like to be told X development code can only be used to do certain things a certain way and not the way the developer wants to ?) ...

Few folks in the hardware space and vast majority of software folks want you to tinker inside of their IC chip packages and software binaries. The long tradition of Silicon Valley is you can use may stuff to build other stuff. Not that you take what they sell, mutate it slightly and sell goods/services as your own.

Going from vacuum tubes to fixed, integrated silicon inside of closed packages was the core of Silicon Valley. Take discrete parts and integrated them into smaller and cheaper packages. The 'Holy Grail' along those lines is a complete computer system in a single chip package.

I wonder how many apple products are designed with closed and restrictive hardware ?

At one point Apple owned a Cray Computer to help with Mac design while Seymour Cray used a Mac to help with his Cray designs. When the tool is useful to the skilled designer the tangential property of the tools don't matter much.

Also Pixar used to have a lot of Mac hardware for workstations. That they moved to PC based systems running Linux speaks a lot about the restrictions that Pixar found with Apple systems.

https://www.quora.com/Are-all-Pixars-computers-Apple
" No. It's a mix.
...
Historically, some of the systems group at the old Lucasfilm Computer Division, whence Pixar was birthed, were involved in actually writing much of BSD Unix. So culturally it's always been a Unix house.

Even when Steve was around, there was never pressure to use one kind of hardware or OS over another. Whatever best suits the job gets used. Pixar's Systems Group supports a large and very heterogeneous network of servers,
..."

There was some hoo-hah back in 2004-2005 where Apple managed to get some XServe G5 accepted into the render cluster pool mix, but that didn't particularly last long. For a relatively short window they were decent 64 Unix computational boxes. While Jobs may not have mandated, it is quite liley there was some skew applied to the process (make the boss happy and pick his other company if there are any tie breakers. )

Macs never were the historical "go to" for the render farm. Nor for the more 'bleeding edge' computational 3D work.
Some dramatic shift in writing, sound, editing, motion, and drawing doesn't have tons of substantive evidence to back it up.

Having a open slot for a computation card would help for those at edge between the areas were Macs have ore dominance and where the mainstream Unix/Linux workstations have held theirs. It would probably helpful in some of the video editing task for specialized cards to be present in some cases. However, the notional that the Macs have to push the others out of the building to be successfully is problematical thinking.

A group working off group network based bulk storage fits the Mac Pro 2013 and iMac Pro model where not trying to keep the majority of bulk storage internal.

 

[filmak]

At one point Apple owned a Cray Computer to help with Mac design while Seymour Cray used a Mac to help with his Cray designs. When the tool is useful to the skilled designer the tangential property of the tools don't matter much.

Very nice example.

 

[singhs.apps]

Few folks in the hardware space and vast majority of software folks want you to tinker inside of their IC chip packages and software binaries. The long tradition of Silicon Valley is you can use may stuff to build other stuff. Not that you take what they sell, mutate it slightly and sell goods/services as your own.

No idea what this statement has anything to do with what I suggested.

At one point Apple owned a Cray Computer to help with Mac design while Seymour Cray used a Mac to help with his Cray designs. When the tool is useful to the skilled designer the tangential property of the tools don't matter much.

By extension, when the same tool doesn't allow you to use your skills in an efficient manner when before it used to, the tangential property ( tangential property ? Where did this one come from ? More straw man arguments ? whatever. ) of the tool matters.

https://www.quora.com/Are-all-Pixars-computers-Apple
" No. It's a mix.
...

Quora ? Puhleez. Is that the best source you got ?

And in my post i mentioned many macs.. Not ALL Macs ( another shifting of the discussion to some imagined inetntion)
Also 2014 ? Why ?

Nevermind. Here is a more reliable ( even of its a PR article ) from the same year :
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/26/how-pixar-uses-gpus/

NVIDIA ( = potentially no new macs after the shift to AMD around the same period at Apple )

Another one :
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/...logy-for-accelerating-feature-film-production

"To accelerate production of its computer-animated feature films and short film content, Pixar Animation Studios is licensing a suite of NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) technologies related to image rendering, the companies announced today.

The multi-year strategic licensing agreement gives Pixar access to NVIDIA's quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) rendering methods. These methods can make rendering more efficient, especially when powered by GPUs and other massively parallel computing architectures.

"Pixar has long used NVIDIA GPU technology to push the limits of what is possible in animation and the filmmaking process," said Steve May, vice president and CTO at Pixar."

The same year ( 2014) Pixar demoed a version of Mari running on an tcMP. Mari is a texture painting app that supports Disney's pTex format. It is a marketing demo ( just saying ), not necessarily what Pixar uses now..

Macs never were the historical "go to" for the render farm. Nor for the more 'bleeding edge' computational 3D work.

Renderfarms are different set of use case. We are talking about workstations. Mac don't even have to target Bleeding edge. But there is diff between 'not bleeding edge' vs 'just cannot use it' (when compared to similar specced systems at the same price point for similar use case )

However, the notional that the Macs have to push the others out of the building to be successfully is problematical thinking.

Another one of your imagined inferences by concocting some new statement to imply intention never made.

 

[deconstruct60]

...

Yeah, I don't think you're an insider.

From what I've heard no one expected the iMac Pro to be a hit. They just don't want pros to leave so they'll put something out there to keep them happy even if it doesn't sell much.

"hit" as in outsell the old 2008-2009 Mac Pro unit volume. Probably not. Primarily it isn't priced to be a hit in terms of volume. It is priced to be profitable. ( similar to the iPhone X in that regard).

I don't think there is internal tracking on the iMac Pro going "if we don't sell X number of units it's a failure." They just need a Xeon box out there.

if Apple sold just 1,000 there would be no designation of failure? That doesn't sound like Apple ( weekly meetings where C-level execs examine the sales number of all the products. ) . The minimal threshold number for the iMac Pro may be smaller than the Mac Pro 2013 but it is extremely likely a factor that is being monitored. Breakeven would be would one threshold number. Meeting expected margin would be another.

Maybe when the Mac Pro ships they'll start comparing unit metrics. But the iMac Pro is the "shut up the pros" machine, not the "sell a million units" machine.

The Mac Pro never was a sell million units machine. ( nor its predcesssors with slightly different names. )

Back even when desktops reign as the "bigger dogs" in the Mac product line up they didn't crack 2.5M units per year. The iMac still were the bulk units back then.

2001 ~2.3M 2002 ~2.3M 2003 < 2.0M 2004 < 2.0M
https://gigaom.com/2010/11/05/the-ongoing-decline-of-the-desktop-mac/

It's a PR stunt, not a profit center.

The iMac Pro isn't a stunt. If there is a shake out later after the Mac Pro is introduced and both can't hit their numbers the iMac Pro will probably last longer than the Mac Pro. As an extension of the iMac it has economies of scale on several major components with rest of iMac line up.

Neither one of these are going to be a major driver of Mac division ( let alone Apple's overall) revenue or volume numbers. It isn't a profit center major driver but they likely are quite profitable. Apple's baseline 25-30% markup is all over these machines.

 

[deconstruct60]

....

Let me ask you a question: Do you think the iMac Pro is selling well? Do you think Apple thought they would sell a lot when they released it?

Pragmatically how many can Apple sell? HBM2 memory is in limited supply. higher end GPUs from Nvidia and AMD being gobbled up of the spot market about as fast as they can be shipped. The iMac Pro is priced quite high ( you have to check every single highest BTO hardware option on the iMac to bet the iMac Pro base price; the 2TB SSD pushes it relatively slightly over the top) .


The Mac Pro 2013 introduction when the backlog ran for over a FY quarter? Pretty nice buzz in the beginning, but grows old like stale fish after a couple of months.

Apple thought they'd sell enough to convince Intel to give them specially binned Xeon W chips. If that was just going to be 10 trays of 1,000 chips really think Intel would have gone through the additional gyrations?

The second issue is the T2 chip. In the context of OS upgrades that seems to be causing hiccups. As usual of late I don't think Apple has all the kinks worked out of the T2 chip at launch ( T2 seems to run off and grab drivers off the internet at boot time with some dubious motivations in some contexts). that can be cleaned up but isn't really ready for a multi million unit run.



The iMac Pro doesn't have to outsell the old Mac Pros. In a large sense it need to just expand the iMac range. The iMac has volume. This can be as much of an offset of those shifting out of iMacs down to MBP+ 'docked large monitor'. 30K leave for MBP and 30K gain for iMac Pro that's a net gain. Apple's task with Mac is not avoid the shrink the overall classic form factors PC market has been teetering on.

If Apple wanted a 1M unit box wonder they could uncork the Mac Mini from being comatose and avoid slapping a significant price bump on it.

Heck, at best it's subdividing the Mac Pro market which is already small. The Mac Pro market was never huge to begin with and Apple knows that.

It think this missing two major points. One, The MP 2013 buyers on 3-5 year cycles are past needing something. The iMac Pro probably covers many of those. One of Apple's major issues is that they are missing folks exiting upgrade cycles.

Two, the customers who are dogmatically adhered (via sunk costs and/or business needs ) to alternative x16, x8, x4 cards integrated into the enclosure ( e.g., non Apple Computer card , Audio DSP I/O , 8K SDI video capture ) , multiple internal drives , no Apple monitor , ultra high RAM capacity , and/or non literal desktop location of their system ( rack/desk-side/etc.) the iMac Pro is even less a solution than the Mac Pro 2013 was. That historical Mac Pro market already was segmented, there were just two segments sharing the only single solution provided. In short, the real issue is just how much fratricide there would be if the two products both were on the market.

The coupled issue to that is just how lazy does Apple want to be with assigning resources to these systems' development. Part of the problem is Apple sloth behavior. Hiding in a hole for years at a time understaffed , under resourced. A decent number of folks are leaving because Apple is hiding comatose for long periods of time (which coupled to Apple's policy about future product makes them non communicators . )


Similar to iMac Pro bow waving on iMac components ( LCD panel, baseline case design , probably sockets and SSD ), the Mac Pro could bow wave on iMac Pro CPU / GPU and other stuff besides LCD panel . If Apple did even year iMac Pro and odd year Mac Pro bumps that would be spectacularly better the Rip Van Winkle act they have engaged on since 2010.
That still accounts for slowing upgrade cycles of customers, but they would be doing something that shipped; more pipeline results.


if Apple was selling 95K Mac Pro per year in the 2009-2010 era and the iMac Pro / next iteration Mac Pro went 55K / 45K per year over the same general pool as bought before that would be a small uptick ( 100K ) which is likely good enough to survive and still meet minimal thresholds. ( same if flipped 45K/ 55K when high amount of derivative R&D cost sharing )

 

[goMac]

The iMac Pro isn't a stunt. If there is a shake out later after the Mac Pro is introduced and both can't hit their numbers the iMac Pro will probably last longer than the Mac Pro. As an extension of the iMac it has economies of scale on several major components with rest of iMac line up.

Neither one of these are going to be a major driver of Mac division ( let alone Apple's overall) revenue or volume numbers. It isn't a profit center major driver but they likely are quite profitable. Apple's baseline 25-30% markup is all over these machines.

I don't think any of this is mutually exclusive. It can be both something Apple does for PR and something where they won't do both an iMac Pro and a Mac Pro.

Mostly what I'm addressing here is people saying:
1. Apple does everything based on shipping large volumes and/or making large profits
2. Why doesn't Apple do something that would make them a large amount of money?

The reason 2 doesn't happen is because 1 isn't true.

The Pro line existed because Steve Jobs had a bunch of friends that needed pro hardware (like Pixar.) Regardless of profits, he wanted pro shops (again, like Pixar) to be on Mac hardware because it was personally important to him. The sales numbers didn't matter as long as he didn't have to see PCs in places such as Pixar. That's why even though Steve Jobs was a design and simplicity nut, he was willing to go along with things like PCIe slots. His customers/friends told him they needed those and he delivered.

That's why posts like this...

I dont stand on Peter's asumptions, since he just make this video for fun, but I love his way to tell us few facts about Apple some people seems forgot: the Cheese Grater was not an Apple product with Apple DNA, jobs hated this fact, and we know Apple's dna: propietary/locked/beautiful.

...are pretty rubbish. Yeah. Jobs wasn't big on upgrade slots. But he was more interested in delivering what his friends in media creation wanted. That was Apple's DNA at the time. There was a lot that Jobs wasn't big on but still went out the door because he could be reasoned with and wanted to serve his customers. Jobs would build a Mac with PCIe slots so Hollywood could make a movie on Macs because that served his ego.

Remember the first thing he did with the pro Mac line was redesign the case for the Power Mac G3 to make it even easier to upgrade because that's what his customers wanted. This is at the same time he killed slots on the AIO line, but he realized he was selling to two different customers with two different needs.

Post Steve? Projects that get done are the ones Ive cares about. Ive does not care about an xMac. Ive does not care about a new Mac Pro every year or expandability. Ive does not care about actual pro grade laptops. Ive does not care about the Mac mini (boring!) Basically all the projects that Jobs cared about because he wanted everyone to have a Mac, Ive does not care about.

Meantime Ive has plenty of projects that probably are not big sellers, but exist because he wanted to do them. Hi HomePod. Hi iMac Pro (ooo shiny black iMac.) Hi Apple Watch.

If you want to understand how Apple works, don't look at profits or sales numbers. Look at if it's something Ive would like working on. (Anything gaming Mac oriented lol no...)

The best hope for the Mac Pro, is that Tim got a big pile of feedback from actual pro customers, and is keeping Ive as far away as possible, or is setting pretty strong ground rules. Basically Tim has to take the role that Steve Jobs used to take of representing actual customers.

The reason the entire Pro Mac line is so endangered right now is because "Pro" is not a design goal of Ive. Thin, light, and as few ports as possible is an Ive goal. It has nothing to do with sales.

Don't treat Apple like a company of engineers. That died years ago (of no fault of the engineers.) They're a design company building concept cars. If the iPhone didn't exist keeping things going they'd be in a world of hurt right now.

My assumption with the next Mac Pro is that, because the project was started due to customer feedback, they're going to actually value that feedback. But that's just an assumption.

Edit:

And before someone says something stupid, "Apple's DNA" is not constant. Apple under Jobs was a different company that Apple is different than Apple under Tim/Ive. Jobs and Ive did not always see eye to eye, don't assume they are the same.

 

[Mago]

Post Steve? Projects that get done are the ones Ive cares about. Ive does not care about an xMac. Ive does not care about a new Mac Pro every year or expandability. Ive does not care about actual pro grade laptops. Ive does not care about the Mac mini (boring!) Basically all the projects that Jobs cared about because he wanted everyone to have a Mac, Ive does not care about.

Right, Ive doesnt care about any Mac, it only cares about its aesthetics, I cosider Apple's delay to update the Mac Pro and Mac mini is due two incidental factors:

1. Lack of Oversight, very evident, Apple Heads just orders something beautiful w/o care of it being a polite product in every respect.
2. AMD Cpu's If Apple will switch to Zen CPUs (timing matches) they may have decided to not to follow Intel's paths and cycles, and switching to AMD cpus implies to put both the Mac Pro and mini in R&D Hold until AMD's cpus are ready for prime time.

The best hope for the Mac Pro, is that Tim got a big pile of feedback from actual pro customers, and is keeping Ive as far away as possible, or is setting pretty strong ground rules. Basically Tim has to take the role that Steve Jobs used to take of representing actual customers.

I don't thrust on Tim Cook, seems he cares more on Music/Media and the liberal agenda than managing Apple

My assumption with the next Mac Pro is that, because the project was started due to customer feedback, they're going to actually value that feedback. But that's just an assumption.

A year ago there where a imminent PRO riot, blaming Apple leadership to abandon Pros (even macOS/iOS developers), they just intervene to mitigate this, I consider the iMac Pro as a last minute cold patch (instead an iMac line expansion) to gain time for the all new Mac Pro architecture based on AMD, consider how matches the times with AMD Epyc and Ryzen APUs plus TB3 release to the public domain, despite if Apple put std or non-std pcie slot on it, it is secondary and we have no cues on it, but anyone capable to read sees an all AMD Mac in near future

 

[0388631]

I don't check in for two weeks and this thread has gone full CSI Macrumors. Yikes. Off to read the juicy posts.

 

[Chancha]

I don't think any of this is mutually exclusive. It can be both something Apple does for PR and something where they won't do both an iMac Pro and a Mac Pro.

Mostly what I'm addressing here is people saying:
1. Apple does everything based on shipping large volumes and/or making large profits
2. Why doesn't Apple do something that would make them a large amount of money?

The reason 2 doesn't happen is because 1 isn't true.

The Pro line existed because Steve Jobs had a bunch of friends that needed pro hardware (like Pixar.) Regardless of profits, he wanted pro shops (again, like Pixar) to be on Mac hardware because it was personally important to him. The sales numbers didn't matter as long as he didn't have to see PCs in places such as Pixar. That's why even though Steve Jobs was a design and simplicity nut, he was willing to go along with things like PCIe slots. His customers/friends told him they needed those and he delivered.

That's why posts like this...



...are pretty rubbish. Yeah. Jobs wasn't big on upgrade slots. But he was more interested in delivering what his friends in media creation wanted. That was Apple's DNA at the time. There was a lot that Jobs wasn't big on but still went out the door because he could be reasoned with and wanted to serve his customers. Jobs would build a Mac with PCIe slots so Hollywood could make a movie on Macs because that served his ego.

Remember the first thing he did with the pro Mac line was redesign the case for the Power Mac G3 to make it even easier to upgrade because that's what his customers wanted. This is at the same time he killed slots on the AIO line, but he realized he was selling to two different customers with two different needs.

Post Steve? Projects that get done are the ones Ive cares about. Ive does not care about an xMac. Ive does not care about a new Mac Pro every year or expandability. Ive does not care about actual pro grade laptops. Ive does not care about the Mac mini (boring!) Basically all the projects that Jobs cared about because he wanted everyone to have a Mac, Ive does not care about.

Meantime Ive has plenty of projects that probably are not big sellers, but exist because he wanted to do them. Hi HomePod. Hi iMac Pro (ooo shiny black iMac.) Hi Apple Watch.

If you want to understand how Apple works, don't look at profits or sales numbers. Look at if it's something Ive would like working on. (Anything gaming Mac oriented lol no...)

The best hope for the Mac Pro, is that Tim got a big pile of feedback from actual pro customers, and is keeping Ive as far away as possible, or is setting pretty strong ground rules. Basically Tim has to take the role that Steve Jobs used to take of representing actual customers.

The reason the entire Pro Mac line is so endangered right now is because "Pro" is not a design goal of Ive. Thin, light, and as few ports as possible is an Ive goal. It has nothing to do with sales.

Don't treat Apple like a company of engineers. That died years ago (of no fault of the engineers.) They're a design company building concept cars. If the iPhone didn't exist keeping things going they'd be in a world of hurt right now.

My assumption with the next Mac Pro is that, because the project was started due to customer feedback, they're going to actually value that feedback. But that's just an assumption.

Edit:

And before someone says something stupid, "Apple's DNA" is not constant. Apple under Jobs was a different company that Apple is different than Apple under Tim/Ive. Jobs and Ive did not always see eye to eye, don't assume they are the same.

So it's down to this: It is not about what machine Apple want to sell, but what Apple actually sees itself as. The post-Jobs era is now long enough for us to see the aftereffects but also not long enough for us to fully grasp that. In fact I guess Apple as an organization is also undergoing some identity crisis as well.

I quite buy the idea that Macs being somewhat heavily involved in creative industries was more or less Job's personal campaign than something on an enterprise agenda. In fact it may have just been a nice coincidence: that Job's Apple always just wanted to use technology to bridge people's lives. But he understood you need a solid foundation in computing terms to even begin doing that. Thus in exile came NeXT, which solidifies OS X and then iOS later down the line. Once back, right away the original iMac was such an accessible media creation hub that previously would have cost thousands of dollars to achieve the same capabilities from other hardware and software venders. Later on the XServe and OS X Server were also made with similar mentality, just tackling a slightly higher spectrum. Creative industries thrived with Macs, not necessarily because the machines were tailor made for them, but that Macs with its ease coincidentally filled a void that's not offered by anyone else.

Even without knowing exactly when Jobs started losing his influence over projects, we could already see in the products, of the lack and discontinuation thereof. The timing of killing Aperture and Shake, killing XServe and RAID, Mac Pro losing slots, MBPs being disposable soldered, what have you. They didn't happen overnight, but over waves when iPhone and iOS became increasingly important to Apple, not just as a revenue source, but as an identity. Without a strong personality, it is the only logical result to lose grasp of what's actually holding the company together in the first place.

Right now the only reliable source is the roundtable, with that at least we know the amigos are aware of the situation, and seemingly wanting to steer away from where they were going. Or perhaps they didn't really know where to go but now they kind of do. This is why I feel quite strongly they are going to offer something in resemblance of what most of this thread's want.

 

[Gav Mack]

I'm waiting for the 7,1 to replace at least my primary 12 core flashed 4,1, no 6,1 or iMac Pro for me. I've supplied a couple of the iMac Pro's, they are nice machines but nevertheless they are still an iMac and you are stuck with AMD. From what Apple have said they have implied it's going to have at least one or hopefully two full length PCIe slots and I'll be putting Nvidia in mine!

 

[Mago]

a Poll https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...o-have-pcie-slots-in-the-new-mac-pro.2107862/

 

[barmann]

So it's down to this: It is not about what machine Apple want to sell, but what Apple actually sees itself as. The post-Jobs era is now long enough for us to see the aftereffects but also not long enough for us to fully grasp that. In fact I guess Apple as an organization is also undergoing some identity crisis as well.

...........

They didn't happen overnight, but over waves when iPhone and iOS became increasingly important to Apple, not just as a revenue source, but as an identity. Without a strong personality, it is the only logical result to lose grasp of what's actually holding the company together in the first place.

Right now the only reliable source is the roundtable, with that at least we know the amigos are aware of the situation, and seemingly wanting to steer away from where they were going. Or perhaps they didn't really know where to go but now they kind of do. This is why I feel quite strongly they are going to offer something in resemblance of what most of this thread's want.

I couldn't agree more .
But the more I think about it , the more concerned I am that Apple will be a day late and a dollar short, again .

As you pointed out, the iPhone and iOS are most important for them at present, for obvious reasons .
Phone sales and user data, and then the gadgets they sell along with the iPhone .
I for one think Apple will find themselves to be too small a fish in too big a pond in the long run , if that's their only strategy , similar to Blackberry .

No matter how much money they made, Apple is way behind in the content and conectivity game .
Upcoming regulations might well put an end to the current frontier law internet business anyways, and providing nothing but overprized toys with fancy emojis can only fool that many people for that long a time .

The next MP , it might use that horrible T2 chip thing with a proprietary boot drive solution .
It might rely on TB externals to a degree, which won't be provided by Apple , and will be crazy expensive if available at all - and outdated before you took delivery of that box of dongles and cables .

It might use parts that once again are not industry standard - say it ain't so !
Apple might be more keen on adding Finder and iOS style functions to OSX, than concentrating on 3rd party driver support and backwards compatibility - shocking !

Frankly, at this point I expect Apple to announce a product too late this year, which will be a ******** like the trashcan .
And like the trashcan, it will be the second coming for some people, which will shout down any criticism .
But after a couple of years, they will shut up, like before , and we can all meet again on the HP forum .

 

[singhs.apps]

I am inclined to give Apple one last benefit of doubt because of their recent overtures to the Mac user base. The April talk announcing a redesigned Mac Pro, the launch of the iMac Pro, opening up the eGPU route ( for those who can use it to bypass Apple’s closing out one GPU vendor) committing to a stand alone display when just a while before they said they were out of the display business, Ive’s ‘boy do we hear’ declaration vis a vis the Mac book pro, the recent move to slowing down of new features to focus on stability and bug fixing etc

 

[urbanman2004]

So have any of you even considered the new Z machines?

Never heard of those

 

[goMac]

Even without knowing exactly when Jobs started losing his influence over projects, we could already see in the products, of the lack and discontinuation thereof. The timing of killing Aperture and Shake, killing XServe and RAID, Mac Pro losing slots, MBPs being disposable soldered, what have you. They didn't happen overnight, but over waves when iPhone and iOS became increasingly important to Apple, not just as a revenue source, but as an identity. Without a strong personality, it is the only logical result to lose grasp of what's actually holding the company together in the first place.

I've heard Steve Jobs described both as someone holding the Mac Pro back, and the one who ensured that it continued to exist, which is probably the best way to describe it. He hated slots, but he also knew they needed a machine to serve people who wanted slots. He would have cut the slots at the first moment it would be sustainable, but I don't know if that would have been 2013, or even now.

The Xserve is another good example. Not really what you think of when you think of Steve Jobs, but a machine that likely owed it's existence to Steve personally wanting to serve those industries. We know the Xserve didn't sell well at all, but it continued on for a long time probably because of Steve.

Steve still at the end killed Xserve because sales were just too low. I'm not sure he would have had an issue with soldered RAM in the MacBook Pros. But I imagine when he would have ended up throwing a USB-C only MacBook Pro at a wall after trying to connect an HDMI projector.

On the Mac Pro, Steve would have gotten tired of an industry friend complaining at him and would have told people at Apple to fix it.

The best way to describe Steve, and why it matters that he is gone, is that he was Apple's best beta tester. If you gave him something stupid he'd figure it out. He was a check and balance on the Ive stupidness. Tim isn't the guy who's going to go to Ive's office, tell him that the prototype MacBook Pro is crap, and then throw on the ground.

 

[VictorTango777]

I've heard Steve Jobs described both as someone holding the Mac Pro back, and the one who ensured that it continued to exist, which is probably the best way to describe it. He hated slots, but he also knew they needed a machine to serve people who wanted slots. He would have cut the slots at the first moment it would be sustainable, but I don't know if that would have been 2013, or even now.

The Xserve is another good example. Not really what you think of when you think of Steve Jobs, but a machine that likely owed it's existence to Steve personally wanting to serve those industries. We know the Xserve didn't sell well at all, but it continued on for a long time probably because of Steve.

Steve still at the end killed Xserve because sales were just too low. I'm not sure he would have had an issue with soldered RAM in the MacBook Pros. But I imagine when he would have ended up throwing a USB-C only MacBook Pro at a wall after trying to connect an HDMI projector.

On the Mac Pro, Steve would have gotten tired of an industry friend complaining at him and would have told people at Apple to fix it.

The best way to describe Steve, and why it matters that he is gone, is that he was Apple's best beta tester. If you gave him something stupid he'd figure it out. He was a check and balance on the Ive stupidness. Tim isn't the guy who's going to go to Ive's office, tell him that the prototype MacBook Pro is crap, and then throw on the ground.

Do people believe that Apple made an honest effort in designing/promoting the Xserve, Mac Pro, Mac OS Server and honestly wanted them to succeed? Or were they purposely set up to fail so Tim can point to them and say "See, people don't want these, so stop bugging us about pro hardware"?

 

[AidenShaw]

Do people believe that Apple made an honest effort in designing/promoting the Xserve, Mac Pro, Mac OS Server and honestly wanted them to succeed? Or were they purposely set up to fail so Tim can point to them and say "See, people don't want these, so stop bugging us about pro hardware"?

I do not believe that Apple made an honest effort to make the Xserve and RAID succeed.

The Xserve was a 1U low-end entry level server, with no path forward. Apple needed at least a 2U or 3U system for the higher end - but it never came. If you don't have a system with multiple PCIe slots, you're not playing the game. Apple was never in the game.

The RAID was a horrible compromise - trying to be an enterprise storage system while using low-end disks. (We bought a few RAID systems because they were the cheapest multi-TB systems available for our QA systems. They went into eWaste within a year, due to constant disk failures and hopelessly primitive management software.)

 

[Flint Ironstag]

I do not believe that Apple made an honest effort to make the Xserve and RAID succeed.

The Xserve was a 1U low-end entry level server, with no path forward. Apple needed at least a 2U or 3U system for the higher end - but it never came. If you don't have a system with multiple PCIe slots, you're not playing the game. Apple was never in the game.

They certainly tried in the beginning, at least with the Xserve. With the Intel transition came a massive push to expand training and support. Large installations were always white-gloved by Apple engineers.

Their path forward at the time was either:

a. add compute nodes (more xserves) and hope your problem runs on xgrid
b. hand off the heavy lifting to the BSD cluster

It didn't need to be a massive powerhouse to be successful, so I don't see the 1U form factor as limiting in this market. It wasn't pricey for a server, and was an all in one box solution (unlimited licenses). The scientific market got a lot of press, but for many business owners the appeal was in buying a single box to handle all your Mac IT needs: VPN, DNS, DHCP, Calendar, Contacts, Messaging, eMail, Software Update, netBoot, etc. not to mention iOS device management.

It was far from a perfect product, but it was extremely useful for managing Macs in your environment. They let it wither on the vine. The Mac Mini will always find a home in data centers or small businesses as long as folks keep stamping out rack mount shelves for them.

I could see a reincarnation of the Xserve as an (long-heralded) iLife hub of some sort. An impenetrable 1U device that magically handles all the Apple stuff in your life - the nerve center of your home and all your gadgets, really...

The RAID was a horrible compromise - trying to be an enterprise storage system while using low-end disks. (We bought a few RAID systems because they were the cheapest multi-TB systems available for our QA systems. They went into eWaste within a year, due to constant disk failures and hopelessly primitive management software.)

Yup, RDF was in full effect when the HDs were touted as enterprise grade. Lots of disk failures. It's when they started removing features faster than consultants could request them, and dumbing down the server OS that we knew it was all doomed. If you're wondering what happened to Xserve and Xserve RAID, they are alive and well:

promise vtrak

www.h3platform.com/thunderbolt.html

 

[goMac]

I do not believe that Apple made an honest effort to make the Xserve and RAID succeed.

The Xserve was a 1U low-end entry level server, with no path forward. Apple needed at least a 2U or 3U system for the higher end - but it never came. If you don't have a system with multiple PCIe slots, you're not playing the game. Apple was never in the game.

The RAID was a horrible compromise - trying to be an enterprise storage system while using low-end disks. (We bought a few RAID systems because they were the cheapest multi-TB systems available for our QA systems. They went into eWaste within a year, due to constant disk failures and hopelessly primitive management software.)

They were meant for render farms for places like Pixar (which were CPU based) and compute clusters.

They worked as servers too, and did a decent job, and Apple was at least putting some amount of effort into OS X Server back then, but they never really got into the server business.

But nothing Apple actually intended them for required more than maybe fiber channel in the PCIe slot.

Basically Apple wanted the prestige of powering stuff like the Virginia Tech cluster and Pixar, while selling them as servers to pay the bills. But they never took off as severs for a lot of reasons. Forget the number of PCIe slots, they didn't even have a server room grade on site repair program.

 

[iPadified]

I believe the Mac initial success with the creatives was because it had a graphical user interface and possibilities of" what you see it what you get", which I think is critical for e.g. advertisement. Far from WP 5.1...That advantage is long gone and windows software is as least as capable as Apple software. If Apple want to sell more hardware, they should buy Adobe and immediately stop selling their windows versions.

Apple does not exist in a vacuum in any market and players comes and goes. Server seem to nowadays run Windows or Linux and if the macs (and also iOS devices) can access these servers reasonably well, what then is the need for Xserve? None. Trying to compete in all markets would be foolish, even for Apple.

 

[Chancha]

He hated slots, but he also knew they needed a machine to serve people who wanted slots. He would have cut the slots at the first moment it would be sustainable, but I don't know if that would have been 2013, or even now.
...........
I'm not sure he would have had an issue with soldered RAM in the MacBook Pros. But I imagine when he would have ended up throwing a USB-C only MacBook Pro at a wall after trying to connect an HDMI projector.
...........
The best way to describe Steve, and why it matters that he is gone, is that he was Apple's best beta tester. If you gave him something stupid he'd figure it out. He was a check and balance on the Ive stupidness. Tim isn't the guy who's going to go to Ive's office, tell him that the prototype MacBook Pro is crap, and then throw on the ground.

Jobs serving as a gatekeeper is something glaringly missing in modern Apple that's for sure. When iPhone 7 lost the headphone jack and then Schiller's "courage" line reached meme status, I remember someone referencing Steve's "the focus to say no" quote, saying he would have done the same. Well no, he wouldn't, he understood why some feature existed in the first place, and more importantly how people already rely their workflow or even lifestyle on it. Abandoning key functions of a product without adequate replacement means alienating a significant portion of the previous targeted audience.

But then it is not so black and white. An 2008 8-core Mac Pro with FCP7, as powerful as it was, a teenage youtuber today wouldn't even dare to touch it let alone be proficient with it. The difficulty is to strike a balance between cutting out the fat and actually delivering the meat.