So what is coming in September, to cause Apple to warn investors?

A product transition that will impact profits for the quarter.

Anybody have any guesses.

I was thinking that maybe they will trim the iPod line up. The other possibility is a high resolution iPad but you would think that would advance sales. Unless of course Apple expects to take a hit on profits with the initial roll out.

I have a third possibility and that is that the Mac Pro gets dropped for a far cheaper machine.

It is curious that they call the move a product transition.

I actually could see that happening. Mac Pro sales have to be fairly pathetic right now.

Err I have to think that would never happen. The Touches biggest strength is the lack of a cell radio.

An interesting concept. The only problem I have here is that the bumper or module if you will can not obstruct access to the iPod port.

I'm certain that they need a low cost iPhone, as you note to address the younger crowd. The exact configuration is harder to get a handle on.

OK but I don't see where a new iPhone would have a negative impact on profits. Rather you would expect sales to be heavily stimulated. Unless of course Apple intends to get real aggressive with pricing.

At best. I suspect Apple realizes it has a problem with the Mac Pro. I doubt it has been profitable for the last several years. They really need to rethink the whole concept.

Actually I think you mis one group. I see a lot of iPod Touches in business, usually personally owned. If for whatever reason a person doesn't want an iPhone the Touch gives them everything else they need.

NO NO No no! We very much need internal expansion. Especially if we wish to see Apple become more successful in the corporate world.

Well yeah because SCSI was a dead horse going no where. It however has nothing to do with PCI Express slots and the need for them.

For the people using GPU cards in a Mac Pro neither MXM nor TB are suitable substitutes. Not even close actually.

One big reason to buy a Mac Pro is to get a high performance graphics card. Be that to support 3D or OpenCL usage. Neither MXM nor TB can support a high performance GPU in this regard.

Actually I'd like to see Apple attempt to more tightly integrate a GPU with a CPU on the mother board. The idea being to bypass the slow PCI bus. AMD fusion is nice as a low end solution but the high end needs a separate GPU and likely will for at least half a decade.

The pro stagnates due to the kack of sales. Pull out one of the reasons to buy a Pro and the stagnation will get worst. Look at it this way, even the Mini gets more respect than the Oro simply because of strong sales.

TB is not capable of supporting the performance that PCI can offer a card. Not to mention the high cost of external devices.

It is insignificant now. There is no doubt in my mind. Part of that is due to the cost. I find it humorous that you think a base Mac Pro replacement should start at $1999. That is an absurdly high price for a entry level expandable desktop machine.

What Apple needs is a base Mac Pro built foprom desktop parts starting at $1200. Save the $2000 offering for a Xeon based machine with ECC memory and the like. Actually even. $1200 might seem high in some circles but I'm expecting that a good GPU will be offered up.

Actually my wish here is a bit different as you got the ideal mill a churning. How about an iPad/iPod expansion port/module in a more generic sense. I think the idea is similar to yours, what I'm thinking of is a snap on "back" that can interface to a number of modules including cell phone modules. IOS devices have a great interface for things besides cell phones, here are a few to stimulat the mind:

1. DVM module. It would likely be a bit bulky due to safety requirements but the power of an iOS device could be put to work very effectively.
2. Oscilloscope module. Again the goal here is to put the iOS device features to work to provide an interesting capability that fits in your pocket.
3. In a general sense the iOS could provide a very suitable interface to a number of instrumentation products.
4. Radio interfaces. While I never understood Apples reluctance to add FM support I'm think something more interesting here like a shortwave module.
5. A blood glucose monitoring module.
6. A bulk storage module.

The list could go on and on. The point is there are many ways a portable device like the Touch could provide for the computational, storage and interface needs of a portable device. The need is for a robust and reliable way to connect to these sleds or backpacks. Interestingly Apple should have learned something from their POS iPods. The big problem to over come is the overhanging iPod adapter port which negatively impacts these ideas. Get rid of that and all sorts of devices could be enhanced with an iPod Touch.

This whole obsession with cameras is bothersome. I have an iPhone 4 and hardly use the cameras. The big problem as I see it is if they set a standard for these modules they will then have to be compatible with that interface for a long time.

That isn't how I took it.

Maybe I misinterpeted things but I understood the warning to be about an impact to profitability.

I keep hearing this and frankly I don't know where these ideas come from. People need to realize that PCI Express is not frozen in time, it continues to evolve. Beyond that there are all sorts of cards that benefit from multiple PCI-E lanes.

In any event if you take functionality out of the card slot into a second enclosure you immediately add expense. The cost coming from the enclosure, power supply and cabling.

All the mumble jumble about cards aside you still have to realize that the slow TB port will be a factor in acceptable use.

The Mac Pro is a monster, huge and outsized. It can be shrunk significantly and still support a high end graphics card.

Well it depends. It depends upon what that XEON board is offering up and what series XEON it is. Depending upon what is in that base model you could have a bargain or a ripoff. We live in a world now where a serviceable 2U server can be had for $1200 so that Mac Pro better have some really impressive features. Certainly a good GPU card adds some cost to the machine but otherwise Apple hardware is sort of spartan.

Time will tell but the big problem with the Mac Pro is that it is to damn expensive when compared against other desktop hardware. The fact that you have no other choice from Apple is an issue that frustrates people too. Especially when a machine capable of doing the same work can be had for $1000 cheaper.


As a side note one only has to look at the Minis to see how much Apple can stuff into a little box. I'm actually fairly impressed with the Mini that now comes with a GPU. All Apple needs to do is put the same development energy into a Mac Pro replacement. Of course the chip companies have to help a bit, I'd love to see an AMD GPU that sits in the second socket of a dual processor system working in a tightly integrated fashion with the CPU. The problem is such a solution does no exist yet. I just want to see Apple move away from past thinking about how to build a Pro machine.

Maybe Apple needs to lol at expanding the Touch line. A commercial model with such expansion would be very interesting.

The problem is, the lack of a low cost slot equipped Mac takes the platform out of the running for many uses. Apple will only push a small segment of the potential market in that direction.

As an aside their does seem to be interest on Thunderbolt in the instrumentation community. The trouble is this market can easily ignore Apple and the cost of TB.

Well if all you have is a hammer I gues all problems look like a nail.

Seriously if your none mobile needs don't fit Apples line up you are screwed.


I'm not sure what this has to do with the discussion. The obvious response is of course you can't fit a PCI card from a PC in a mobile device. That does not however preclude the use of PCI-Express as a bus standard in a mobile device.

For example a good arguement could be made for using PCI-Express for those sleds you talked about.

Which first requires a PCI-Express facility.

The conversation revolved around the very low sales of the Mac Pro.

I've always have seen the Mac Pro as a bit of a boondoggle if you will. It is a big box that never was at the right price point to sell in large quantities. In the last couple of years Apple tired to offer up a low end Mac Pro that was configured in such a way to interest no one.

With a bit of engineering effort I can see Apple building a box that serves a wider array of users thus leading to more units shipped. The key to the Mac Pros survival is to have a chassis that can support both low end and high end needs.

Actually that is true in the PC world but in the Mac world I'm not convinced there is much difference in driver quality. Lets face it Apple hasn't exactly set the OpenGL world on fire.

Economics dictate that you will move away from Macs to do the actual rendering.

As to the CPU / GPU thing that will slowly change over time as they bring more capability to the GPU. Remember GPGPU computations where originally forced onto GPU's not really designed for that sort of work. AMD and NVidia have a long way to go before the GPU's can be leveraged in the way many would like.

Even so I don't see Apple playing in the Cluster world anytime soon. So if you are seriously interested in Rendering your only choice is to look at rendering hardware running Linux.

I believe this is very doable.

Well that is nice but then we are left with this reality. As general purpose hardware becomes faster and more capable, the need for the special purpose hardware slowly diminishes. Either that or the special purpose hardware ends up being sold into the high end niche markets. CAD is a perfect example here, many engineers are fine with their laptops these days, something that would have been unheard of a few years ago.

I don't think Thunderbolt will be replacing stuff as fast as some suggest. Some have vision of sugar plums in their eyes when discussing TB, it is not an be all end all port that some imagine.

Though I would never buy one, at least not at this point, I also look forward to a redesigned PRO. I'm hoping they can come up with a chassis that solves a wide array of needs. It really shouldn't be all that difficult.

Note that this is biased towards PC's not Macs.

While it is true a lot of effort is going into GPU assist for Rendering applications it isn't as wide spread as one would like. Much of the work is still done on the CPU.

Yep one chassis but two distinct performance and capability profiles.

Your point is right but this isn't the evidence that supports it in my mind. The big advantage of an i5/i7 based desktop Mac is simply the access to the internals. That is storage and the ability to plug in a PCI-Express card or two. The new Mini covers the bottom end of the performance part of the equation but it still sucks as a platform that can be reasonably expanded. Especially as we move into the future (next year) when the Mini will be upgraded yet again to Ivy Bridge which will put a lot of power in the box that has no internal expansion capability to speak of.

Yep a mother board swap out would give one a rather impressive reconfiguration of the chassis. The focus would be on high reliability and high speed computation.

Well we won't get to deep into that argument. I will simply say that a single socket general purpose motherboard would allow them a low cost avenue to an internally expandable desktop machine.

I'm a bit like a fish out of water here as I little interest in rendering. However what I do keep an eye on is what is happening in GPU land. I see AMD making great strides here as they try to integrate the GPU with the CPU. Further they are looking at making the ALU's and other engines in a GPU far more flexible and capable. So the question is how soon can they get these ideas into silicon.

The current Fusion products aren't there incase anybody is wondering but they do show potential. We could see some rather impressive hardware in less than four years. The big problem here is that software will have to catch up. Frankly I suspect Apple is pushing Intel hard in this direction also, that is where the GPU become equal to the CPU. Intels announced desire to make the Ivy Bridge GPU OpenCL capable is certainly a start.

In any event with a surplus of transistors more an more capability will be rolled into the
GPU's coming soon. However does this really solve anything? Think about it, if we get faster hardware will people still be rendering at 2K? As much as this future hardware will help the run of the mill user those on the bleeding edge will still be complaining in the future. It kinda relates to CAD users mentioned in another response, these days engineers and designers are often happy with a laptop with a half decent GPU, it is only the guys on the bleeding edge that hunger for faster and faster hardware.

I've been following AMD and their GPU and APU technology in general but don't bother with specifics. What I'm interested in seeing is the APU chips that end up with the GPU part being a full partner on the memory bus. That is when they implement memory management and cache control and provide the GPU with a 64 bit address space.

Let's face it the current LLano APUs are fairly impressive already. I would not shy away from them unless I knew for sure that I needed high performance out of my CPU. As good as the current APUs are though moving to a completely heterogeneous computing platform is very enticing. I'm actually sure prized that Apple hasn't embraced Fusion as it seems to map directly onto where they are going with Mac OS.

You are talking the Bulldozer based APUs right? They certainly have the potential to be very nice but I don't think they completely realize AMDs long term vision for heterogeneous computing. Even so I wouldn't likely reject a machine with such hardware. As long as they have a significant GPU performance advantage over Intel they are a good choice for many users.

There is always that issue of Intel just being good enough. I would think though that people will notice a significant difference in GPU performance on AMD powered hardware before they notice the difference in CPU performance. AMD just needs to more aggressively market their positives.

In any event I'm thankful Apple recognized the Intel GPU issue in the Mini. So we are half way there to an all AMD machine from Apple.

This is the part I find distressing and have to disagree with. There is a wide range of engineering taking place on laptops these days. The advantages that a laptop offers over a desktop is significant for field work. While everybody likes faster hardware it is possible to be very productive on a laptop with a real GPU. Even if that GPU isn't top of the line.

So I tend to see more and more engineers with laptops. Can they handle high end CAD - nope but they don't have to.

I've seen some of AMDs news releases, mostly with respect to the Fusion APUs. Here's hoping they can keep it together long enough realize what they are projecting for the future. I'm most interested in APUs as I see that as the way of the future.

I believe you are talking about the Bulldozer based chip. If so I tend to agree it should provide for a very nice APU, especially considering that the GPU gets upgraded again.

However a key point here is that the current APUs aren't that bad. They stress good performance where a lot of people want to see it.

I don't think it is that simple. Look at how many machines where sold with Intel only graphics in the past.

When you say "CAD Engineer" I would have to agree. However the vast majority of CAD packages are not sold "CAD Engineers". Rather they go to a wide array of technical individuals involved in a wide array of projects. These days most of those people use laptops extensively. No you won't be doing top end mechanical design at Ford with a laptop, however that is a relatively small world these days. For many a laptop is fine for mechanical design.