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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
- Thread starter Mago
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Sorry, I used to Believe Apple sell SOLUTIONS, but seems lately what they sell is complications...
They build Macs for people who will buy them.
When it comes to product line-ups, Tim Cook still thinks like a COO more than a CEO. And people still buy Mac Mini's with HDDs, MacBook Airs with (what is today) a low quality display, non-Retina iMacs and iMacs with HDDs so COO Tim Cook still keeps them in the line-up because they generate revenue.
And that is why there is still a Mid-2013 Mac Pro for sale. They may only shift a couple thousand a week, but it's still a couple of thousand that are generating over $1000 of profit per unit.
I still believe Apple is reading AMD cpu for upcoming macs, one of those should be the mMP but I wont wait until 2019 for it.
A Hint...
https://twitter.com/reneritchie/status/981966092573728768
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It's never been impossible. If anything, 2019 makes AMD sound more reasonable where 2018 and definitely 2017 did not. The idea that they were prepping a launch in 2017 with marketing already working through ad campaigns was nutty.
But the entire rumor sounds like Apple pushing all their vendors around, especially in since Intel has been rumored to design custom chips for Apple before as well.
At the end of the day, Apple will go with whoever gives them the best deal. They want Intel's prices to come down, but Intel gives them a lot of influence over Thunderbolt, and in the past has been willing to basically design entire boards for Apple. AMD has already given Apple run of the Radeon Technology Group, would love another customers, and is an attractive buyout target. And using their own in house chips has it's obvious advantages, but they don't have a workstation grade chip in house.
Apple will scare everyone into negotiating a better deal and see what shakes out. Happened all the time with the PowerPC vendors too until Intel was just the better deal.
For the crowd that wants 3-4 GPUs inside the system. I suspect that eGPU would the solution for how to go to greater than 2. One isn't enough ( there were some MP 2013 users that did leverage the dual GPUs. not everyone but enough to show up on the radar. ). It is the greater than two that is more so the corner case. I won't be surprised if they leave that corner case to eGPUs since need solution across the rest of the Mac line up.
That team isn't for desktop users. It is for all Macs. It would be desktop and the other options.
In the article they found a problem that was a driver chokepoint. It isn't just hardware they are pushing.
This team really can't save them from being lost. Even brining in famous consultants for brief periods isn't going to get them off of sampling selection bias. The approach to gathering market intelligence seems to be bankrupt. This stuff shouldn't be "we were shocked ... .users were doing blah blah blah."
eGPUs are more critically important to the rest of the Mac line up; not the Mac Pro. The flawed pit here is to put the Mac Pro in equal dependency status as the rest of the Mac ecosystem. If they do that the Mac Pro is probably a fail. The display business won't have a significant contribution from Mac Pro eGPUs.
Until Apple uncorks the Mac Pro is eGPU to dual large solutions. So yeah they are going to hype it now, but there is little evidence though that is the long term plan. eGPUs saturated into 15-20% of the Mac market is probably a pipe dream. eGPUs are likely going to be relatively small and not a driving force for display sales.
That really doesn't make sense. Apple doesn't appear to be jumping into the eGPU enclosure business. So customers buy a 3rd party solution for that. Then your position is that customer don't buy an Apple GPU card either. So customers buy a 3rd party solution for that too. At this point we are two levels out from the Mac they bought from Apple and all of a sudden become rabid Apple loyalists and just have to buy an Apple solution when there are dozens of 3rd party monitor solutions available. Why? 3rd parties are best and they do a 180 change in direction.
Second, a simple solution for Apple is they have a huge bug up their butt to completely punt on the eDPU daisy chain until the end is to drop the dogma that the Apple Pro display has one and only one input. TBv3 and mini Display port and a "change input" button on the device. "Scary" problem solved.
Again WTF is the marketing team doing. If go look at the competitor 3rd party monitor folks would be buying they have multiple inputs on them. So the question is why the dogma on just one? [ and yes will have to do some work around because users will have a button and might need to enable the ports in usb hub mode. ]
But the nominal mode would be Thunderbolt.
I think using eGPU for >2 GPUs is reasonable.
But that also means the GPUs would possibly need to be paired.
None of what the article said doesn't mean they aren't product management for pro hardware. There have been rumors of a team that is re-arranging the MacBook Pro and this could very well be that team.
I think you're getting too wrapped up in details that Apple probably isn't. Pro group is going to commission and Apple Pro Display. Pro group is pushing eGPU. Pro group will want their Apple Pro Display over here to work with their eGPU over there.
There isn't going to be a "Well you bought one third party device so now every device you buy has to be third party" thing going. And Apple will want to sell as many displays as they can.
There also isn't a hugely compelling reason for an external display to have Thunderbolt now, especially if Apple thinks most of their pro customers buying pro laptops will be using eGPU.
Then there definitely wouldn't be a reason to include a Thunderbolt input at all. I mean, why? I don't think there would be any USB ports left on the display. Definitely no ethernet/firewire/whatever else. Why include Thunderbolt?
As the LG Ultrafine shows, you can't even provide full speed USB-C ports on a Thunderbolt Display. And if Apple chose to ship something 120 hz or 8k or whatever that just gets worse.
I'm not sure how you got there, as the article explicitly states the opposite.
I think it's more than ~15 million p/y. They have been averaging around 4-5 million per quarter for some time now.
Another round of hooey.
1. Apple has never said they wanted to make everything for everybody. They have been consistently quite the opposite. Jobs' four quadrant product grid of laptop / desktop and consumer / pro basically is not trying to cover everybody with everything thing.
That matrix was firmly in the range of 5-6 products. That is at least 1/5 or 1/10 the number of products the other major competitors offer. They never were trying to be IBM that sold "everything".
2. And it is nothing to do with "those they like".
People who pay money for products on a regular basis. But "like" as in that bestest buddy in the whole world has little to do with it. It isn't that they dislike the folks want folks they don't make. It is just that they don't make that stuff.
Actually it does matter if it is all proprietary. That is what a huge block of the folks left over from the old design have been constantly yelling. Form, not function, is in their top 3 , if not top 1, priority list.
There is no indication that it is going to be two years. It isn't one year (from last April), but it is possibly relatively early next year. It is whether they slid into 2019 from late 2018 or whether started core work even later. It was probably an 18 month cycle at least anyway. ( so if started cleaning out the weeds to plant in April 2017 it was October 2018 that was the earliest time if there were no hiccups, problems , bugs , or schedule mismatches with component contractors. ). A reasonable expectation management schedule would have pegged a slide into Janurary 2019 because that stuff always happens on complicated projects. ( not a Elon Musk pull dates out of your butt schedule ... a real one that doesn't blow smoke. )
It is not. A stagnant Mac Pro has done nothing significant to impede the growth of the Mac ecosystem over the last 8 years. Nothing. That is just the Mac subcomponent. The rest of Apple is in even better shape.
Practicing self delusion isn't going to help you operate better in the real world.
It is flawed. They really don't need to have screwed up Mac product development (the whole line up) this bad. It is hard when all of the middle management is rich off their stock growth and they get lazy. Apple isn't dismissing h/w development but they need growth and h/w isn't it in and of itself.
I think has people just a bit too siloed in the new Silicon Valley hipster culture and a bit too much "let's all sing songs around the camp fire". They lost a bit of calling out bozo's for being bozo.
Here's what 2019 tells me.
Apple is waiting for ARM,PCI and TB.
Then there will probably be a modular MacPro developer kit at WWDC 2019 just like there was an Intel transition kit.
Apple is waiting for ARM,PCI and TB.
Then there will probably be a modular MacPro developer kit at WWDC 2019 just like there was an Intel transition kit.
And I already told you guys at the April meeting they literally had nothing.
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I very strongly doubt the next Mac Pro will be ARM. Getting a Apple ARM workstation CPU ready would take much longer, and as others have noted, pundits have been saying that Apple Custom CPU != Always Mean ARM.
The Intel Transition Kit also had almost nothing in common with the final product.
Plus the Mac Pro has a 2019 launch date now. Custom chip rumors put it in 2020 for the first Macs. So timeline doesn't line up.
I'd consider that creating a monitor that used a widely available standard interface would be "a good thing"® ...
So you're saying Apple will have laptops and iMac's with ARM while keeping Intel in the Mac Pro.
That makes no sense having two different CPU architecture's.
I know. I mean, I don't have any insider knowledge, but I'm surprised there are people here arguing against the idea.
I'd argue Apple isn't in better shape than it was 8 years ago. The smartphone market (by far its biggest cash cow) is entering commoditization.
Might explain why Apple seems to be reevaluating
Sure it does. They did it with Intel 64/Intel, PowerPC/Intel (twice), PowerPC 64/PowerPC 32, PowerPC/68k... Arguably they're already doing it now with the iPad and the Mac.
Mac software supports more than one architecture at a time. It's just hasn't been used recently, but if the rumors are to be believed, dual ARM/Intel software might show up at WWDC this year. Just starting with putting iOS and Mac apps in a single app.
You said:
Windows does ARM
I called you out that kernel support for ARM is not even close to "Windows does ARM".
You counter with a link that says that in a month or so Microsoft will release an SDK for ARM app support.
Jesus.H.Christ riding a bicycle. That's so far from "Windows does ARM" that words fail me.
And look at what "Windows on ARM" is really focused on:
- Chromebooks. Very limited web/app clients.
- IoT. Windows on your webcam and smart toaster.
[QUOTE="deconstruct60, post: 25958260, member: 290553" They lost a bit of calling out bozo's for being bozo.[/QUOTE]
We resent that! Do you think all we do in the "Pro" department is clown around all day?
We resent that! Do you think all we do in the "Pro" department is clown around all day?
The smartphone market isn't the Mac market. So moving the goal posts doesn't provide any quantative metric to show that Apple's mac market is doing worse now that it was 8 years ago. Quantative evidence about the Mac market that is much worse..... got some?
The iPhone and iPad segments of Apple need to figure out there own stuff but the Mac market will never make up the lost ground if the iPhone and iPad completely implode.
I think what Apple is reevaluating is the need to put effort into being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
The iPhone is having a hiccup so pull everyone off of iPad and Mac to help out. Errr. continuously robbing Peter to pay Paul is kind of ridiculous when have $100B in the bank. Just be a bigger company and hire enough people to get the work done. They may not have the same outsized margin long term, but there is such a thing as being penny wise and pound foolish.
i also think the execs have gotten past the "Apple will never do anything after Steve ... they're dead " meme that has floated around for the last 6-7 years. Apple can get another home run product, but just moving base runners incrementally around the bases scores runs also. I think they are trying to find a new balance. Aggressive about getting to the future but not too aggressive (they can only pull technology toward them so fast .... even if a giant bucketload of money).
So why do I get the feeling this communication was more about
stagnating iMac pro sales = guys buy the iMac pro, We aren’t shipping the Mac Pro this year
than
we care about pros.
stagnating iMac pro sales = guys buy the iMac pro, We aren’t shipping the Mac Pro this year
than
we care about pros.
Apple thinks that the riots now are better than the riots that would happen if they said nothing about the Mac Pro at WWDC and people were expecting it.
They have a good ARM64 System on a Chip (SoC) to run on. What they don't have is a good ARM64 that is better than average at pretending to be a x86_64.
Also the Windows Store had initially target IoT with ARM so they had a sizable set of ARM32 apps out there. They need to move them up since going past just IoT.
First year of Macs on Intel was largely a backslide back to 32 bit from somewhat being on 64 bit Mac OS X. It didn't stay stuck at 32 bits very long. Microsoft's stay will probably be even shorter.
I'm wondering if Apple getting Mac devs to dual compile this year (or at least iPad devs to dual compile for x86) is part of a plan to give them a head start so they're less reliant on emulation.
But I'm still becoming less and less convinced that Apple is going to switch fully to ARM.