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

[deconstruct60]

It was amusing to note that during this 2nd MacPro "status meeting" that the Apple brass recommended "Pros" buying a new iMac Pro if they needed a computer now instead of any of the cylinder trash cans.

Only they didn't. direct quote from the article.

"... customers are waiting to spend budget on, say iMac Pros or other machines, they should pull the trigger without worry that a Mac Pro might appear late in the purchasing year. .."
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/05/apples-2019-imac-pro-will-be-shaped-by-workflows/

Yes the iMac Pro is in there but just as equally there is "or other machines". The notion that they are herding folks exclusively into iMac Pro is baseless. Note that 'machines' is plural. That can't be a reference to solely the MP 2013 model.

It is highly likely there will be some overlap between the Mac Pro and iMac Pro both in price range and capabilities. All the more so when customers don't know what the price and capabilities of the Mac Pro will be. What was present was customers guessing at the overlap extent and price range extent and coming up with a muddled fiscal planning. For 2018 there is no overlap because there is not Mac Pro 2018. That's the only problem being solved here.

In 2019 there extremely likely probably will be overlap at least in price and probably also in capabilities in certain dimensions (e.g., use the same CPU SKUs in both products. ). However, customers will have the info on both sides so they can figure that out for themselves. This year they are not getting 'Mac Pro vs. iMac Pro' info in time to make Q2-Q4 purchasing decisions in advance.

The trash cans are mere placeholders now....(though the low end 6 core trash can would make a kick ass (though large) MacMini replacement).

I don't think Apple has any expectation for the MP 2013 other than it will bleed off at roughly the same rate it has for the late year after the price cuts. That's it. That is a rather expensive alternative for a Mac Mini.

Apple probably expects that most folks who would have previously bought a MP 2013 would buy an iMac Pro. that would still be true next year when the Mac Pro is shipping. (and the MP 2013 gone).

 

[CWallace]

If they were going to launch in January or February they'd be talking about it at WWDC 2018. Which they aren't.

For the record, Apple did not say they would or would not mention the Mac Pro at WWDC in June. Matt Panzarino said he did not believe they would do so and he said that because he feels the machine is still in the development stage and is not yet ready for a physical reveal - which it probably is not.

Panzarino also offered the opinion that Apple's approach with the Pro Workflow Team and their products (i.e. - Mac Pro) is to not treat them like the consumer lines where you lock-down all communication to maintain as much secrecy as possible for the "surprise and delight reveal" at an event. Instead, you "engage in a meaningful way with them on their actual workflows and ingest their pain points as actionable intel that helps them head off issues".

In that vein, Apple does not have to show a ready for production sample at WWDC if by that time the machine is defined to a point where Q1 2019 EIS is a possibility. However, they could conceivably still talk about design features or functionality without actually showing them in such a scenario.

Yes, people who don't plan to buy a Mac Pro will flock to the Internet to bitch about Apple not showing a physical machine, but the people who do plan to buy one will probably be happy that Apple is at least giving them a better idea of what to expect.

 

[barmann]

For the record, Apple did not say they would or would not mention the Mac Pro at WWDC in June.

I can't remember the last time Apple has commented on the future of the MP - officially .
Some bloggers getting permission to parrot what they heard at a meeting or factory tour isn't an official statement .

In that vein, Apple does not have to show a ready for production sample at WWDC if by that time the machine is defined to a point where Q1 2019 EIS is a possibility. However, they could conceivably still talk about design features or functionality without actually showing them in such a scenario.

Apple doesn't have to do anything .
And they didn't .
It's their prerogative .

Yes, people who don't plan to buy a Mac Pro will flock to the Internet to bitch about Apple not showing a physical machine, but the people who do plan to buy one will probably be happy that Apple is at least giving them a better idea of what to expect.

That's my favourite along with the 'Apple way ' gibberish .

Of all things, hordes of people bitch about Mac Pros online - because they don't give a damn and just need a break from tweeting about celebs .

Hence, every poster being critical of Apple's approach isn't a Mac afficionado requesting adequate response from his favourite manufacturer, but a random cheap schmuck without affiliation to the matter ?

Also, I understand perfectly well what Apple's idea of an upgrade path is at the moment - buy an iMP now and pass it on to the reception desk, if and when a suitable MP will emerge .

 

[CWallace]

I can't remember the last time Apple has commented on the future of the MP - officially. Some bloggers getting permission to parrot what they heard at a meeting or factory tour isn't an official statement.

What do you define as an "official" comment?

The April 2017 meeting was held at Apple and "chaired" by Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and John Ternus and there is a full published transcript of the event. I consider that "official" - at least as official as a WWDC or Steve Jobs Theater keynote.

 

[Mago]

• April's 17 "mea culpa"
  
• April's 18 "not sorry, we did it again..."
  
• April's 19 "what are you talking about?"

 

[askunk]

* April's 20 "we're switching to ARM... no more updates for your mMP"

 

[pat500000]

May 1st: “what’s mac pro?”

 

[filmak]

May 1st: “what’s mac pro?”

Do you still have these gift cards?

 

[-hh]

Really hard to tell at this point. A pro team is a pretty significant move by Apple, and shows they really are interested in getting back in to the pro market.

That doesn't mean they are guaranteed to be successful, and it doesn't mean they won't push everyone to iMac Pros if they think they can get away with it.

But it's a start.

I think if people knew how bad the voices for the pro market were at Apple they'd be more excited about a pro team.

Ultimately, it really comes down to just what this "Pro Team" has been tasked with.

For example, they could be busy optimizing Pro workflows on the iMac Pro (and NOTHING else) and their NDA prevents them from admitting that there isn't a 'Modular Mac Pro' at all.

----manually merged posts----

...So let me not condense it:...

That was what the 1997 remark was about.

Yeah, I hear ya with the crazy proliferation of models from that era - - but that's sidestepping the issue of a sufficiently robust design (or even a few designs) which quite deliberately can accommodate incremental hardware updates for improving product refresh rates.

I like that they redesigned the internals of the G5/cMP for each generation, even when they could have just slapped in the new components and be done with it.

Ehhh...no.

Apple did (and had to) change for the G5 to cMP, but Apple consistently does the absolute minimum as often as they could get away with.

For example, that's why the 2012 cMP still had SATA-2 interfaces for its HDDs instead of SATA-3 (which was three years old by that point): if Apple was really interested in new, higher performance components for its premier Mac Pro workstation, the 2010 cMP was when its motherboard should have been updated to SATA-3.

 

[zephonic]

Apple did (and had to) change for the G5 to cMP, but Apple consistently does the absolute minimum as often as they could get away with.

For example, that's why the 2012 cMP still had SATA-2 interfaces for its HDDs instead of SATA-3 (which was three years old by that point): if Apple was really interested in new, higher performance components for its premier Mac Pro workstation, the 2010 cMP was when its motherboard should have been updated to SATA-3.

I see your point.

In my mind, there were only really two generations of Mac Pro, the 2006 and 2009, as in the Intel 771 and 1366 sockets. The second and third generation were updates to the first generation, and the fifth was essentially identical to the fourth, except for slighter higher bus and memory speeds for the 6/12-cores.

But again, I didn't make that very clear.

 

[pat500000]

Do you still have these gift cards?

yeah i do.

 

[goMac]

For example, they could be busy optimizing Pro workflows on the iMac Pro (and NOTHING else) and their NDA prevents them from admitting that there isn't a 'Modular Mac Pro' at all.

Maybe. I think Apple is further behind on the Mac Pro than everyone on this forum thinks. Maybe nothing solid at all does exist yet. But it's a stretch to say there will be no Mac Pro. Apple has now said it will ship in 2019 so they don't get out of this now without a ton of public embarrassment.
[doublepost=1523336905][/doublepost]

Apple did (and had to) change for the G5 to cMP, but Apple consistently does the absolute minimum as often as they could get away with.

For example, that's why the 2012 cMP still had SATA-2 interfaces for its HDDs instead of SATA-3 (which was three years old by that point): if Apple was really interested in new, higher performance components for its premier Mac Pro workstation, the 2010 cMP was when its motherboard should have been updated to SATA-3.

I heard it was worse than that, and that they were basically offloading much of the work of upgrading year over year to Intel, which is why the Mac Pro never significantly diverged from Intel reference designs. SATA-3 would have been a separate controller IIRC and not part of the reference design.

I know everyone thinks of the cMP as the glory days, and they're not totally wrong, but the reason it stuck around is because Apple did almost no work, and when you're putting in almost no money, it's easy to make a good profit.

So if Apple is looking to bring those glory days back, it doesn't sound to me like a finicky custom design custom board monster. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Apple's willing to operate the Mac Pro at a loss now or a pour a bunch of time and effort in that they weren't before. Dunno.

 

[-hh]

Maybe. I think Apple is further behind on the Mac Pro than everyone on this forum thinks. Maybe nothing solid at all does exist yet. But it's a stretch to say there will be no Mac Pro. Apple has now said it will ship in 2019 so they don't get out of this now without a ton of public embarrassment.

Sure, except that Apple has backed out of promises before. For example, the infamous Adobe "no 64 bit" CS4 issue was in no small part because Apple decided to kill the previously-promised 64 bit API's for Carbon (Apple did publish a "64-Bit Guide for Carbon Developers" guide {reference}), which was responsible in part for Adobe's delay (had to do a major rewrite into Cocoa of a lot of legacy code).

I heard it was worse than that, and that they were basically offloading much of the work of upgrading year over year to Intel, which is why the Mac Pro never significantly diverged from Intel reference designs. SATA-3 would have been a separate controller IIRC and not part of the reference design.

Frankly, I've not kept track to recall when SATA-3 was added to Intel's reference boards, but the generic PC vendors of the day did what they had to, to bring SATA-3 online promptly into their higher end product lines. It isn't like the cMP didn't have enough space inside to add a daughterboard or whatever to the motherboard, nor Apple really hurting for money, nor board layout designers ... its more the case that they were busy on higher visibility iOS products, which probably alludes more to the Mac division not being an organization that's beneficial to advance one's career.

I know everyone thinks of the cMP as the glory days, and they're not totally wrong, but the reason it stuck around is because Apple did almost no work, and when you're putting in almost no money, it's easy to make a good profit.

Where this gets interesting is that if we look back on prior eras of where there was a lot of "Power User" customer happiness, I'd probably tag the original Mac II (6 NuBus slots) and the 75/85/9500 era as well, and all of these have the 'modular' aspect of more commodity based and customer-installed configurations that allowed a high degree of hardware flexibility (to optimize to workflow needs) as a major design attribute.

So if Apple is looking to bring those glory days back, it doesn't sound to me like a finicky custom design custom board monster. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Apple's willing to operate the Mac Pro at a loss now or a pour a bunch of time and effort in that they weren't before. Dunno.

I'm afraid that currently, Apple's attitude of selling the Mac Pro at a loss means an MSRP of $4999 ... that Spaceship building wasn't cheap and has to have driven up every business units' overhead rates.

 

[mattspace]

I know everyone thinks of the cMP as the glory days, and they're not totally wrong, but the reason it stuck around is because Apple did almost no work, and when you're putting in almost no money, it's easy to make a good profit.

The irony of course being that "Apple doing no work and just putting macOS on generic Intel chipset hardware with off-the-shelf parts" is exactly what the vast majority of the Mac Pro userbase, as opposed to the mac-writing-about blogarati, want Apple to do. The pre-2013 Mac Pro's greatest feature, was how little it was screwed up by Apple "improving" standard formats. Indeed, everything bad about the cMP, the things that inconvenience users, are the parts where Apple deviated from the standard.

There is no marginal benefit Apple can bring to the machine, that is worth the risk of investing in them being wrong about their future predictions. As always, Apple is Black Swan Fragile.

 

[goMac]

The irony of course being that "Apple doing no work and just putting macOS on generic Intel chipset hardware with off-the-shelf parts" is exactly what the vast majority of the Mac Pro userbase, as opposed to the mac-writing-about blogarati, want Apple to do. The pre-2013 Mac Pro's greatest feature, was how little it was screwed up by Apple "improving" standard formats. Indeed, everything bad about the cMP, the things inconvenience users, are the parts where Apple deviated from the standard.

There is no marginal benefit Apple can bring to the machine, that is worth the risk of investing in them being wrong about their future predictions. As always, Apple is Black Swan Fragile.

I don't disagree. I think the funny thing was Apple thought of the 2013 Mac Pro was "finally we're giving the Mac Pro the in depth attention it deserves!" and they just ended up making something no one liked.
[doublepost=1523375673][/doublepost]

Frankly, I've not kept track to recall when SATA-3 was added to Intel's reference boards, but the generic PC vendors of the day did what they had to, to bring SATA-3 online promptly into their higher end product lines. It isn't like the cMP didn't have enough space inside to add a daughterboard or whatever to the motherboard, nor Apple really hurting for money, nor board layout designers ... its more the case that they were busy on higher visibility iOS products, which probably alludes more to the Mac division not being an organization that's beneficial to advance one's career.

cMP seems like it had plenty of room. Again, Apple just didn't do much of the work. Whether or not that was due to the iPhone is kind of a side topic. I mean, clearly they didn't want to spend the time on it.

I'm afraid that currently, Apple's attitude of selling the Mac Pro at a loss means an MSRP of $4999 ... that Spaceship building wasn't cheap and has to have driven up every business units' overhead rates.

It's a good bet that Apple Park will save them money, as inefficient as the design is. The spending on that building was almost nothing compared to their profits anyway.

(An overwhelming majority of Apple's office space is rented right now. One of the good things about building a new campus is it will bring their costs down. Infinite Loop has only been able to hold a small subsection of Apple for a while now. And the overhead of employees having to go between a bunch of rented buildings was not good for costs either.)

 

[CWallace]

Maybe. I think Apple is further behind on the Mac Pro than everyone on this forum thinks. Maybe nothing solid at all does exist yet. But it's a stretch to say there will be no Mac Pro. Apple has now said it will ship in 2019 so they don't get out of this now without a ton of public embarrassment.

I am firmly of the opinion "the Plan" was to scrap the Mac Pro and have the iMac Pro serve as the top-end machine. Sometime in late 2016 or early 2017, enough people with enough clout were able to change that decision and get the Board and Senior Management to approve a new Mac Pro.

To that end, Apple had to have the April 2017 meeting to prepare everyone that when Apple announced the iMac Pro at WWDC, it was not going to be the best Mac available (as was the original plan).

And this is why we're having an April 2018 meeting because so many of us (myself included) have been assuming the Mac Pro would be a 2018 product and there would be at least mention of it at WWDC. But now that is not going to happen and so this meeting, like the one a year ago, is meant to prepare us all for that.

As such, I agree with you that the design for the Mac Pro is not yet finalized and probably will not be until Late 2018 or early 2019 (so it may be a WWDC 2019 reveal and shipping announcement).

The irony of course being that "Apple doing no work and just putting macOS on generic Intel chipset hardware with off-the-shelf parts" is exactly what the vast majority of the Mac Pro userbase, as opposed to the mac-writing-about blogarati, want Apple to do.

Actually most of the "mac-writing-about blogarati" seem to want a "Cheesegrater Mk. II" or an "Apple Z8", as well. But Apple doesn't do that anymore so that is not what we're going to get. And since Apple is developing this from the ground-up, two years sounds about right considering. I know that Apple taking the time to design something "special and unique" as opposed to just doing a PC OEM re-badge is scaring the s**t out of a lot of people and that fear is without merit, but it is what it is.

 

[goMac]

Actually most of the "mac-writing-about blogarati" seem to want a "Cheesegrater Mk. II" or an "Apple Z8", as well. But Apple doesn't do that anymore so that is not what we're going to get. And since Apple is developing this from the ground-up, two years sounds about right considering. I know that Apple taking the time to design something "special and unique" as opposed to just doing a PC OEM re-badge is scaring the s**t out of a lot of people and that fear is without merit, but it is what it is.

I definitely think anyone who wants another Cheesegrater, and exactly that will be disappointed. There won't be any 3.5" bays, Maybe 3 PCIe slots but not more than that, if any at all. No optical drive bays.

Even if it's going to be upgradable it won't be a standard tower, and Apple has hinted at that a little bit. Not saying it will be a tube though.

 

[Michael Scrip]

I think the funny thing was Apple thought of the 2013 Mac Pro was "finally we're giving the Mac Pro the in depth attention it deserves!" and they just ended up making something no one liked.

Exactly.

And Schiller's "Can't innovate anymore, my ass" quote didn't do them any favors either. Apple will be haunted by those words for the foreseeable future.

Schiller's quote should be printed in big letters on the walls inside Apple's pro lab as if to say "don't make this mistake again..."

Actually most of the "mac-writing-about blogarati" seem to want a "Cheesegrater Mk. II" or an "Apple Z8", as well. But Apple doesn't do that anymore so that is not what we're going to get.

It's funny though. I wonder how many people stopped buying Trashcan Mac Pros and started buying Z8 models from HP?

HP, Dell and others will certainly continue to sell these types of tower workstations.

I wonder if Apple ever thinks, "gee... maybe this is what these customers want?"

There's gotta be some merit to this tower form-factor... considering it's what everyone else sells... (and Apple themselves used to sell a tower for a decade before the Trashcan...)

And since Apple is developing this from the ground-up, two years sounds about right considering. I know that Apple taking the time to design something "special and unique" as opposed to just doing a PC OEM re-badge is scaring the s**t out of a lot of people and that fear is without merit, but it is what it is.

Sure... but "special and unique" is what got them into this mess in the first place.

You're right though... Apple will probably never release another "standard" tower form-factor. (sadly)

But they also can't go crazy with another trashcan-level concept.

There needs to be some sort of balance between the two.

I wonder if we look at 5 years of Cheesegrater sales and 5 years of Trachcan sales... which number is higher?

 

[-hh]

I don't disagree. I think the funny thing was Apple thought of the 2013 Mac Pro was "finally we're giving the Mac Pro the in depth attention it deserves!" and they just ended up making something no one liked.

Overall, I view the 2014 tcMP as an illustration of what happens when your 'Pro Focus Group' only contains representatives from a single domain (eg. larger video houses)

cMP seems like it had plenty of room...

Oh, there's no doubt that there was adequate space.

Again, Apple just didn't do much of the work. Whether or not that was due to the iPhone is kind of a side topic. I mean, clearly they didn't want to spend the time on it.

FWIW, what I was really alluding to here is behavioral: people will act in their own self-interests and business divisions that don't have the attention of Leadership will have their more ambitious people transfer out to get onto "Hot" projects to advance their careers. In this regards, the Mac product line - - and desktops in particular - - were probably viewed as boring and not something that would advance a career.

It's a good bet that Apple Park will save them money, as inefficient as the design is. The spending on that building was almost nothing compared to their profits anyway.

At $5B, it was IMO ~33% more expensive than they really needed to spend...as a Stockholder, I find the extra $1-2B that was squandered away on frivolities to have been fiscally irresponsible: that money could have been used to raised my dividends...or better yet, hire a Mac Pro team years earlier.

(An overwhelming majority of Apple's office space is rented right now. One of the good things about building a new campus is it will bring their costs down. Infinite Loop has only been able to hold a small subsection of Apple for a while now. And the overhead of employees having to go between a bunch of rented buildings was not good for costs either.)

Oh, I don't disagree that better facilities were needed - - my comment is more centered around just how poor the Leadership was which not only squandered a lot of money (~$1800/ft^2 ), but also resulted in a de-optimal product. Worse than the Pentagon, the design is quite ineffective in supporting even a five year staffing vision (let alone a 'twenty year' vision for growth). Plus its integration for mass transit infrastructure is quite lacking, which pragmatically compels staff to commute by car, which makes them a poor corporate citizen.

Simplistically speaking, they could have just copied the Chrysler Headquarters and Technology Center and had a building nearly twice as big at half the cost, with enough left over to spend $500M for a light rail mass transit station on site.

 

[goMac]

At $5B, it was IMO ~33% more expensive than they really needed to spend...as a Stockholder, I find the extra $1-2B that was squandered away on frivolities to have been fiscally irresponsible: that money could have been used to raised my dividends...or better yet, hire a Mac Pro team years earlier.

Sure. You could make the argument that it was too expensive of a campus. But it's harder to make the argument that Apple couldn't afford to hire a Mac Pro team because they built Apple Park. They could afford both many times over. The Mac Pro ended up where it did due to organizational incompetence, not finances. Even if they hadn't built Apple Park we'd all be here.

 

[bigtomato]

In the last few months I've been reviewing the pro / cons of staying with apple. I've come to the conclusion that even if they come out with a desktop I still won't be able to afford it. If you look at the trends with apple they have been increasing pricing for everything. Also, at the end of the day I'm looking at the apps I use and can do the same on windows for 1/3 the price. Its unfortunate that apple has become greedy again and basically a monopoly and can do whatever they want without consequences. At the end of this month I move unto a desktop with an i8700k processor with Nvidia 1080 ti all for under $2k CANADIAN. A comparable systems would be an iMac pro and can't even come close to the graphics. Goodbye apple !!

 

[CWallace]

Oh, I don't disagree that better facilities were needed - - my comment is more centered around just how poor the Leadership was which not only squandered a lot of money (~$1800/ft^2 ), but also resulted in a de-optimal product. Worse than the Pentagon, the design is quite ineffective in supporting even a five year staffing vision (let alone a 'twenty year' vision for growth). Plus its integration for mass transit infrastructure is quite lacking, which pragmatically compels staff to commute by car, which makes them a poor corporate citizen.

Well folks can't blame Tim for that one since Apple Park was Steve Jobs' vision.

 

[Naimfan]

Well folks can't blame Tim for that one since Apple Park was Steve Jobs' vision.

Since when have facts gotten in the way on Macrumors?

 

[AidenShaw]

Plus its integration for mass transit infrastructure is quite lacking, which pragmatically compels staff to commute by car, which makes them a poor corporate citizen.

I've been pointing this out since day 1.

Meanwhile, Adobe is laying plans for a couple more office towers next to their downtown San Jose campus. Google is buying tons of land for a huge urban campus around the CalTrain (heavy rail) and VTA Light Rail stations in San Jose. The Google campus will be office, residential and retail integrated - co-located with the major mass transit stations.

Apple Park is a failed design from the last century. Cupertino should never have allowed it to be built - I guess that the RDF was too strong for small town council members to fight.

 

[goMac]

I've been pointing this out since day 1.

Meanwhile, Adobe is laying plans for a couple more office towers next to their downtown San Jose campus. Google is buying tons of land for a huge urban campus around the CalTrain (heavy rail) and VTA Light Rail stations in San Jose. The Google campus will be office, residential and retail integrated - co-located with the major mass transit stations.

Apple Park is a failed design from the last century. Cupertino should never have allowed it to be built - I guess that the RDF was too strong for small town council members to fight.

I don't think there is any room for any more employees in Cupertino. That's the cap. Building more offices won't matter.

All of Apple's competitors have campuses in other cities and Apple doesn't in any significant way, only smaller offices. The only real way out for Apple is expanding elsewhere. In that context, while maybe not cost effective, the number of employees that can be packed into Apple Park isn't as relevant.

But we're way off topic now.