Customers report long delays when customizing Apple's Mac Pro

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014


Build-to-order models of the Mac Pro have seen significant delays in recent weeks, as the future of Apple's professional desktop line remains in question.



One reader who has been in contact with AppleInsider ordered a high-end Mac Pro in late March that was advertised to ship within 3 to 5 business days. After the order was placed, the estimated shipping date was pushed back to April 11.



As of Monday, the Mac Pro still hasn't shipped, and a new shipping date has not been provided. Requests for information from Apple have yielded few results for the customer, as a representative from the company reportedly said that the custom 12-core configuration must come straight from China.



Signs of supply constraints with the Mac Pro first cropped up last week, when Amazon went out of stock of 8-core desktop. However, inventory has since at the online retailer.



It's unknown whether the delays and constraints occurring in recent weeks up are related to a forthcoming update to the Mac Pro, a discontinuation of the aging desktop line, or something else entirely. AppleInsider first reported last October that officials were questioning the future of the Mac Pro, which has become an incredibly minor part of the company's overall business.











Potential chip candidates for the Mac Pro became available in early March, as Intel updated its Xeon line of high-end CPUs. The new Xeon E5 chips incorporate the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture that first appeared in traditional mobile and desktop chips last year.



The Mac Pro desktop has not seen an update since July of 2010, when the desktop was given up to 12 processing cores with Intel Xeon processors.



[ View article on AppleInsider ]

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 70
    Is the Mac Pro line going the way of the Space Shuttle? I hope that's not the case.
  • Reply 2 of 70
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TripleCore View Post


    Is the Mac Pro line going the way of the Space Shuttle? I hope that's not the case.



    You can say this, and you can say "going the way of the redesign" with equal weight to both arguments.



    It's an interesting time. Apple better not blow it.



    And both "discontinuation" and "update on the order of the last one" are 'blowing it'.
  • Reply 3 of 70
    Quote:

    Signs of supply constraints with the Mac Pro first cropped up last week, when Amazon went out of stock of 8-core desktop. However, inventory has since at the online retailer.



    Has since... What?
  • Reply 4 of 70
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    Has since... What?



    The inventory has since, but before it went to go far as decided to look like.
  • Reply 5 of 70
    chubadchubad Posts: 3member
    I got mine custom configured and it shipped in 3 business days. Of course this means New Mac Pro's next Tuesday. Not that it matters to me now. The G-5 Quad served me well for almost 6 years and I'm sure the Mac Pro will do the same. Went for a real speed demon. 3.33ghz six core with OWC 480gig 6G Pro SSD and striped raid on the other drives. 32 gigs of RAM and I'm a very happy camper!

    I am still hoping the Apple does not abandon the Mac Pro for a long time. With Billions in the bank and more $$ pouring in I think they can show a little love to the Pro Market.
  • Reply 6 of 70
    Apple makes a lot more money from the consumer lines of products surely, but there are too many power users that want to work on OSX and need the heavy lifting. When they discontinued the Xserve they were not affecting day-to-day users of the machines since for the most part servers are not tended to daily and are not meant as a primary use machine. The story is different with the Mac Pro and Apple knows it.



    Losing the high-end market wouldn't hurt apple in the short to medium term but it could hurt them long term as it unravels a lot of the support they have established in certain industries that depend on having these types of systems available.



    No matter how great mobile processors become (a common argument), the workstation variants will always be more powerful and some people just need all the cycles they can get!
  • Reply 7 of 70
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chubad View Post


    I got mine custom configured and it shipped in 3 business days.



    That's why this article is useless.



    ONE customer saw a delay. Without knowing what their configuration was, it's impossible to guess what the cause of the delay was. Maybe he ordered a high end video card which is temporarily unavailable.
  • Reply 8 of 70
    wardcwardc Posts: 150member
    Can't believe Apple is still selling it's 2010 model Mac Pros which haven't been updated in over 700 days, at all...



    No talk or rumors out of Apple on a new Mac Pro, Apple seems focused on the consumer-end stuff these days. First they ditch the XServe, I think the Mac Pro is next.



    Edit: I have a 3.33GHz 6-core Mac Pro, great machine, but I think Apple doesn't see a cash-cow market in selling Pro desktops anymore. iPhones and iPads is where Apple is making most of their money these days.
  • Reply 9 of 70
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,189member
    Mac Pro: the only Apple desktop with more than 2 DIMM slots, support for ECC memory up to 128GB, multiple CPUs, more than 4 cores per CPU, multiple user-replaceable SAS/SATA drives, PCI Express.



    A pisser if Apple lets it go.
  • Reply 10 of 70
    paulmjohnsonpaulmjohnson Posts: 1,380member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    You can say this, and you can say "going the way of the redesign" with equal weight to both arguments.



    It's an interesting time. Apple better not blow it.



    And both "discontinuation" and "update on the order of the last one" are 'blowing it'.



    I agree. This is an area where I feel Apple need to keep the product line going, even if it doesn't achieve the profit margins they have come to expect from their other product lines. As long as it achieves break-even, in my opinion it's important that Apple demonstrates they are still interested in Pro users.



    It was the distinction that got a lot of us interested in Apple in the first place, and I hope they don't lose it.
  • Reply 11 of 70
    eksodoseksodos Posts: 186member
    I hope they are killing off the Mac Pro to focus on the most important products. Mac Pro is an unnecessary distraction that attracts very little business for Apple.
  • Reply 12 of 70
    macbook promacbook pro Posts: 1,605member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chubad View Post


    I got mine custom configured and it shipped in 3 business days. Of course this means New Mac Pro's next Tuesday. Not that it matters to me now. The G-5 Quad served me well for almost 6 years and I'm sure the Mac Pro will do the same. Went for a real speed demon. 3.33ghz six core with OWC 480gig 6G Pro SSD and striped raid on the other drives. 32 gigs of RAM and I'm a very happy camper!

    I am still hoping the Apple does not abandon the Mac Pro for a long time. With Billions in the bank and more $$ pouring in I think they can show a little love to the Pro Market.



    Congratulations! Very nice configuration, that is a beast! Welcome to the forums.
  • Reply 13 of 70
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by eksodos View Post


    I hope they are killing off the Mac Pro to focus on the most important products. Mac Pro is an unnecessary distraction that attracts very little business for Apple.



    ?
  • Reply 14 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by eksodos View Post


    I hope they are killing off the Mac Pro to focus on the most important products. Mac Pro is an unnecessary distraction that attracts very little business for Apple.



    Bean counters may agree with you, since the Mac Pro is such a small market for Apple. However, I think it would be foolish to kill the content creation engines. The new markets are content consumers, iPad, iPhone, iPod, iMac (some content creation), but the majority of content creation is done on Mac Pro and killing it would require those folks to use Windows or Linux machines to create content. And it you tick off content creators, they may not want to create content for your ecosystem anymore.
  • Reply 15 of 70
    sabugasabuga Posts: 45member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cpsro View Post


    Mac Pro: the only Apple desktop with more than 2 DIMM slots, support for ECC memory up to 128GB, multiple CPUs, more than 4 cores per CPU, multiple user-replaceable SAS/SATA drives, PCI Express.



    A pisser if Apple lets it go.



    Not meaning to be a smart arse, but the current iMacs (and I think "all" of the 21.5 and 27 inch versions) have got 4 RAM sockets. Thats how they get 16 GB (4x 4GB DIMMS).

    Having said that, I fully agree with your point. I have a PowerMac G5, and an iMac simply isn't a good replacement. I love being able to upgrade the HDD's, add PCI cards, and Optical drives, without a fully disassembly!
  • Reply 16 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by eksodos View Post


    I hope they are killing off the Mac Pro to focus on the most important products. Mac Pro is an unnecessary distraction that attracts very little business for Apple.



    Wow, this statement just goes to show some real stupid mac users are out there.



    Not only has Apple been ignoring the Mac Pro for years with the exception of maybe upgrading the CPU or graphics cards. it has pretty much been the same Mac Pro since 2008. just minor upgrades.



    so the "unnecessary distraction" statement borders on lunacy. It would be easy for Apple as a company of its stature to have a nice niche team to build motherboard design. upgrade case design and do upgrades every 6 months.



    That is what the desktop line ought to receive, a minor upgrade 1x a year after a major upgrade 1x a year.



    There are plenty of Mac Professionals who use power rigs, it is just that Apple has been remarkably lacking in attention, which is why the amounts of Mac Pro's selling has been slipping. Some people have been forced to use larger iMac config, which will have a more limited lifespan.
  • Reply 17 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by eksodos View Post


    I hope they are killing off the Mac Pro to focus on the most important products. Mac Pro is an unnecessary distraction that attracts very little business for Apple.



    The Mac is attracting many developers from the PC camp to target applications for iOS. The time has never been better for a Mac Pro update...I believe that Apple could bring some excitement to this class of computer and sales could be much stronger.
  • Reply 18 of 70
    macbook promacbook pro Posts: 1,605member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by WardC View Post


    Can't believe Apple is still selling it's 2010 model Mac Pros which haven't been updated in over 700 days, at all...



    No talk or rumors out of Apple on a new Mac Pro, Apple seems focused on the consumer-end stuff these days. First they ditch the XServe, I think the Mac Pro is next.



    Sadly, I believe Apple could have saved the XServe.



    Apple could offer activation and management server via OS X Lion Server that iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches such that could be managed within the business enterprise. Such a service could include encrypted and compressed email, messaging and web browsing. While this wouldn't sell millions, I believe (considering the continued strong interest in Research in Motion solutions) this could be a popular solutions for government and companies where security is a primary concern (defense, finance and healthcare). I believe this would create a halo effect within the enterprise for additional enterprise products.
  • Reply 19 of 70
    i switched to an imac a year ago because the high end iMac was the equivalent of a low end pro and much cheaper with a 27" monitor already included.



    that said, i could still use a much more powerful machine. photoshop still chugs for me.



    i saw an article about a mac concept that i would love to see come to fruition. http://www.extremetech.com/computing...e-apple-istack



    this would be an awesome way to combine the mac mini and mac pro lines!
  • Reply 20 of 70
    tylerk36tylerk36 Posts: 1,037member
    Some one on a thread in Apple Insider told me "Nope don't see it". I was referring to a 12 core Mac Pro. The damn thing has been out since 2010.



    On another note. I hope they don't discontinue the MP line. I plan on buying one late this year. I suspect they won't.
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