Despite new CPU options, Apple reportedly questioning future of Mac Pro - Page 3

Maybe Apple ramps down production of Mac Pro but creates a kind of Apple Custom Shop that caters to hollywood and scientists by allowing them to custom order any computer configuration they can dream of that would be made to order...

Well, I'd love to see something a little bigger that the current mac mini (maybe the size of two of the stacked) but with a sweet dedicated graphics card, maybe an option for dual processors (or at least top of the line processor options), a much higher upper RAM limit and an option for dual hard disk but for even something like that if they're going to push thunderbolt then they better start putting more than just 1 port on each machine. I understand laptops but for a screen less box they can afford to put some extra ports on. Would be a lovely balance of power and size and could allow me to attach it to a large TV and serve as my "home base" machine attached to an external RAID in combo with the wireless keyboard/mouse I already have. I also understand that Apple is pushing the whole anti-optical drive agenda but since they do offer the external superdrive to those with the macbook airs how about redesigning the damned this to work with thunderbolt and giving it blue ray capability? I mean isn't it about freaking time? As for dumping the mac pros, I'd think they would want to redesign and keep it, if nothing else for prestige of having a true muscle machine. Anyway, hope my two little pipe dreams above come true and I'd be a happy camper getting them along with the upcoming ultra-thin macbook pros.

I am just trying to decide between a high iMac and Mac Pro. Price and Xeons finally made the decision for me - go iMac.

Apple can sell the Mac Pro if they'd build high end i5 and i7 configurations. I don't want a high core-count, but slow clock speed Xeon. Put in the latest greatest i7 and bus and include a full grown graphics card with multiple SSD options and you could probably sell a bunch of these for $2000-2500. Position them to overlap with the higher iMacs with a value proposition of expandability vs all-in-oneness and they'd have lots of buyers.

The Xeons just cost too much.

I run a studio with four edit suites, all running Final Cut Studio on a fiber network with shared/ managed storage. We were using Final Cut Server as well, but since future friendly software is essential for archived projects, we have moved away from FC server software for project management. This decision was made instantly after Apple end-of-life'd the FC Server.

Our artists use professional high-end compositing and 3D software to create HD material for broadcast. For us, the Mac Pro is true to it's name. It is a reliable, essential tool in our professional workflows. A mac mini design, will not support the fiber cards that we require, or the video card upgrades that we use for heavy lifting on graphics. Thunderbolt will not adequately address our needs for multiple displays in conjunction with the networked storage as well.

If Mac Pro is abandoned, our entire business, and many others in production will be forced to abandon Apple products and workflows. This has already begun (in haste IMHO) with a sort of exodus after the release of Final Cut X - which despite claims to the contrary, is not a viable professional tool for anyone that's not a one-man, one-computer business.

It's my hope that Apple will announce an adequate Mac Pro replacement in the future, and for the love of professional, perhaps even a roadmap to ease our minds. This year has been a scary one for Mac-based post production people.

Yes, but that's a pretty significant thing. For heavy graphics work (3d rendering, huge baked textures getting pulled into CS5) while running Xcode, Safari, Mail, and popping in and out of other dev tools, Aperture, etc., and tossing in running Windows in a VM on and off, it turns out the CPUs and RAM are pretty key, a decent video card doesn't hurt either, and it's nice being able to slap drives right in the machine as well. I'm not sure how well that will fit in a Mini Pro.

The other issue is that the majority of the price of the Pro tower isn't coming from having expansion slots and some drive bays - it's the Xeon server CPUs that Intel is able to totally price-gouge on given AMD's lack of competitiveness in that space. The 2006 Pro tower was extremely competitive on price in general, and the later ones keep drifting higher - and the only component going up is the Xeon.

It might help Apple's sales to do a 'normal' tower with a high end non-Xeon CPU as well, but the additional cores are a huge help on my work, and going iMac isn't an option. The upgrade cycle currently is very long since Intel hasn't done that much recently to make an upgrade worth it - and Apple not having an upgrade doesn't help those who would pull the trigger. Sort of a catch-22 there... complain that sales aren't high enough while not updating the product because the sales keep dropping.

I'd really HATE to end up on friggin' Windows again just because Apple can't see their way to produce an actual high-end machine. Sadly, they may not care since they're making more on consumer products, but some of the very apps that help sell their consumer products are created on Pro towers today. Pretty sad if they get to where you have to use Windows to make Mac & iOS apps. :/

Gadgets.

Gadgets so easy to use, even a cave man can do it.

So far, that has been the most successful strategy Apple has ever had. They never made it as a computer company. The big bucks started to flow when they started down the path to being a gadget company. That is clearly their direction now.

So long as they come out with a computer with expansion possibilities to allow me to connect 3 or 4 displays then I'll be happy.

They really just need a viable tower. The Mac Pro is a huge, expensive dinosaur that I would like to see disappear off the face of the Earth, but you shouldn't have to buy a PC to get a machine with a replaceable video card.

Even a taller Mac Mini with a graphics card slot and drive bay would appease a lot of people.

Apple is making more money from computers than every other computer company on the market. This is before we even get to the gadgets.

Apple has fared a lot better at selling computers than Compaq, Packard Bell, Gateway, e-Machines, IBM and the rest of the long list Wintel companies.

Seems like there would be a lot of interest in a "beefed-up" version of the mini, maybe... wait for it... in a "cube" form factor!

Like the newton, the old cube wasn't the "bad idea" it was made out to be... it was just way too early for the market.

This is just the latest step in Apple's long term plans to morph itself into a consumer electronics and entertainment company. OS X has been dumbed down and iOS-ized, the Xserves are gone, they removed features from OS X Lion server, Final Cut X is a joke among video pros, their only current monitor doesn't even work with the Mac Pro or Macbooks older than six months. The last two years have been a disaster for pros who depend on Macs to do their work. At my company we're looking at Windows 7 and Linux PCs to replace our Macs because Apple seems determined to abandon the professional power user.

I think Apple should ditch the Mac Pro and the iMac and replace them with a configurable mid-range headless desktop. Make it a bigger, faster Mac mini. Maybe it can be a cube!

I guess it depends on your definition of "rolling in money."

I completely agree with you. The Mac Pros back in 2006 weren't quite so overpriced as they are now, the latest ones are utterly extortionate. It's no wonder people aren't buying them. I have a 2006 Mac Pro that's still going great, albeit with a slightly dodgy PSU. Buying an initially more expensive machine that's upgradeable really makes sense to me. My MP cost about £2500 in 2006, but if it wasn't for upgradeable graphics, I would have been forced to sell on the otherwise perfect machine long ago. The CPUs in this machine are plenty fast enough, it's always the GPU that's the bottleneck for me.

If I'd bought an iMac in 2006 instead, by 2008 the original ATI 1900XT would have started to show its age, and I would have needed to upgrade. With an iMac, the only option is a new machine. Then again in 2010, the 8800 in the second iMac would either be bust (making the machine pretty much worthless) or too slow, so I would have needed another new machine. If the 8800 in a Mac Pro died, no sweat, just replace it for £150, or less for a second hand card.


Let's tot up the totals for the ownership costs of a Mac Pro vs an iMac since 2006:

Initial Mac Pro price: £2500
Initial iMac price: £1600

First Mac Pro Graphics card upgrade: £200
Sale of old iMac (presumed working): £600
New iMac: £1600


Second Mac Pro graphics card upgrade: £200
Sale of second old iMac (presumed working): £600
New iMac: £1600

Total for Mac Pro: £2900
Total for iMac: £3600

Obviously these prices are estimates, but from my reckoning they're pretty accurate. You can see how much more expensive it is to keep getting new machines, and the longer you keep upgrading the same machine, the more you benefit.

Software that's primarily CPU based doesn't seem to have bloated quite so much over recent years, making CPU improvements less important. Software running on GPUs advances in leaps and bounds, especially games, making it much more important to upgrade. Also, if the logic board or GPU dies on an iMac, then you're pretty much stuffed, and may as well fork out for a new machine. With the Mac Pro, you can replace it for much less due to less soldered on parts (like the GPU).

If Apple had just one PCI-E slot inside the iMac so you could replace the graphics card, I'd be sold. There's actually quite a bit of room inside iMacs, especially in the 27" model. Plenty to fit a standard graphics card. Either that, or a Mini Mac Pro as some have suggested. That'd be great, two HDD slots, two PCI-E and 4 RAM slots. Perfect!

I think you are using the wrong metric to prove your point

True, but the Mac Pro isn't supposed to get the vast majority of the sales, either. And the iMac has mobility graphics. Some people need what's in the Mac Pro, and for them, the iMac simply doesn't cut it. The Mac Pro is for them, so they don't *have* to defect to Windows.

I'm sure I'll be in the minority with this opinion, but I think the MacPro chassis externally has the kind of classic design associated with the 911 series in cars or the 747 in aircraft. Instantly recognizable by its silhouette, substantial to the touch and indifferent to surrounding examples of its kind - unless they are also MacPros. It also delivers internally - mine drives two monitors including a 30' Cinema Display, all drive bays are fully populated and the RAM cards almost so, and I'd have to stop to count the items hanging from every port. It does triple duty as workstation, entertainment center and file server, sometimes all at once. I appreciate the fact it has worked mostly without complaint over five years. I think it still has life not only as a workstation but as a platform for showcasing Apple design and concepts. That being said, if Apple does drop the Pro I think the bulked-up Mini described elsewhere in this thread should be waiting in the wings.

Short answer: It is not approved by Apple and they are capable of preventing it if they choose to.

It's certainly possible. I moved to the Mac because it was more stable and let me get work done, and I consequently became an advocate for the platform. If Apple can't keep the machines on the leading edge and turns them into half-iOS devices, I'm not sure I'd be so happy. I guess one thing in Apple's favor there is that Windows 8 in its current state looks like it could drive more users to Apple regardless of where Apple is heading.

I understand that the iMac is usually a far better value for the majority of people, but isn't this punching the most hardcore developers in the face? I know Apple kills products whos sales are slumping rather quickly, but it wouldn't cost much to keep it updated with SB based Xeons and Thunderbolt.

And besides, they killed the Xserve too, are they expecting people to run business servers on a Mini?

I still believe that the 27" iMac is the best value in computing today. They just need to make the next iteration more modular. Ditch the optical drive and the 3.5" HDD and provide two user accessible SSD (2.5") bays. One would be enough for the smaller iMac, but the 27" is a Pro machine and it deserves two. Keep the Thunderbolt ports and add a couple USB 3.0 ports for external storage.

I have to believe that they could make this even thinner that the current iMac and provide better cooling at the same time. I would buy one in a heartbeat!

the only thing I can tell from most of the previous posts is that VERY few people understand the needs of professional who need the horsepower.

Expansion for example is critical for a video editor even if you have a top end video card you're going to need a slot for your "BOB" of choice wether its for FCP or avid, another slot for fiber channel or Dual channel SATA and most likely another slot for something else down the road and that's if you aren;t using a card that needs two slots and many of them do.

The i7 is nice as some have said, but it's just not the workhorse a xeon is. no "portable" class chip will ever be.

Thunderbolt is great, but I don't see it servicing the needs of high end pros any time soon.

Too bad for the pro's. I wonder who will continue to service our needs and even if they do we'll have to switch to Windows. Bummer. My crew and myself hate the platform with a passion.

There has been allot of discussion lately (pertaining to google specifically as I have seen) about companies using the strategy of gaining popularity with respected and influential professionals to garner popularity for their platform with the masses. Once the numbers for the pros are outweighed by the masses the pro features/ platforms/ software(s) are discontinued and relegated to the status of "legacy" or DOA because it "costs the developer too much" to continue servicing the "niche" they created. Funny how video editing was a huge part of what saved Apple a few years ago and yet we aren't worth the consideration these days. How times have changed.


It seems like we will be returning to the days of proprietary systems ALA SGI and Sun MS's before too long. I doubt that MSFT and Windows will really be able to service our needs. (Not that Avid for example doesn't run well on Windows, just the OS is indisputably a dog). Further many of the hardware manufacturers will have to revamp their product line to work with whatever comes down the road and that will take a long time if they ever decide to go down that road since it seems clear what Apple's directions is.

My personal two cents. Apple is starting to really suck in it's treatment of pro's to put it simply. I'm not that annoyed because there will be options and it's just a computer platform, but they did alienate those of us who helped in large part to keep them and make them relevant when no one else cared to use their machines. BAD on them for that. Great consumer company, but they obviously don't want or need to be anything else. I hope it doesn't bite them in the ass years down the road when they need a loyal fan base to prop them up should the consumer market (a fickle on in that) decide that Apple is yesterdays pink Cadillac.

IMO They really should spin off the pro division (They'll never license OSX out no sense barking up that tree) and stop worrying so much about profits of X vs profits of Y. Profit is profit and sometimes goodwill with influential people is better than being the most popular.

it's not just the power though, it's the storage as well.

Almost every program I use on the MacPro can't take advantage of multiple CPU's and no Mac program can use more than 4 Gigs of RAM anyway. For those reasons, while the "power" of the Mac pro is welcome it's over-rated and not much different from an iMac in practice.

What I really NEED is the storage. I use all four hard drives and each is 2TB's. I then back those up to a network storage device.

You can add some external drives to an iMac but it's cumbersome, stupid and expensive. If you have a lot of data and need it available at all times you need the extra storage provided by the Mac Pro. I can't see how anyone could have much of an iTunes library without one unless they buy into the whole iTunes in the iCloud stuff.

I think its more accurate to say that Apple doesn't know how to make money doing what you want them to do.

Apple never got anywhere competing against beige boxes. They've always had to try and go somewhere else.

They reach so many more people and are so much more relevant selling consumers $500 ultraportable computers. They sell tons of those. It has the features and pricing people want.

You could say the pro is useful for the apps that get made for iOS, but I bet if you profiled iOS developers the vast majority get their apps made on macbooks and imacs, which are more than powerful enough.

I would argue that the beige box future simply doesn't exist. Does anyone have a great business making tower PC's? Isn't everyone who depends on making computers in this line struggling to some extent? Margins are way down, quality is down, its a difficult and fairly profitless business. Yes Dell sells lots of boxes, but they make almost no money doing it. Lots of businesses buy and lease these boxes for their users, but its just a big lumbering slow business with slow upgrade cycles and cautious purchasing habits.

It's time to phase out this line. It's a distraction for Apple and takes their attention off of the more profitable and useful product lines. They probably even have some brilliant engineers and designers on the Pro line now who would be alot more useful to us elsewhere.

The iMacs do have a PCIe bus, it's just not available in a form that uses a standard port. Apple could easily add the port to the logic board if they so wanted.

Thunderbolt isn't as fast as the latest PCIe either, so you won't find a GPU in a box attached to your Mac via Thunderbolt any time soon. No doubt Thunderbolt will get faster, but so will PCIe. By your admission, more work is being done on the GPU, so surely that should be more reason to have it accessible in some kind of standard PCIe slot inside iMacs?

you are certainly not alone in this opinion. I have never seen a PC workstation case that measures up in terms of usability, style, and craftsmanship. I will probably try to retrofit the case when the Mac pro gets retired. It's just solid.

You clearly have no idea about why there is a pro market or what it is. iMacs are great, but they aren't equivalent in any way to the Mac pro.

How did you guys deal with the glossy mirrors? Super low lighting? Black out all the windows? I know of a few large design studios in Vancouver that decided to drop the Mac because of these issues. At one, productivity was dropping because of headaches and eye strain - and they didn't want to black out the windows on their sweet studio space. They are using ugly anti glare sheets on the iMacs they still have and had to move color critical rendering into "the cave".

When my Mac Pros die, looks like my 30 year love affair with Apple will come to an end. I heard windows 7 isn't so bad. Maybe Apple will figure out how to manufacture a functional display by then like ALL the other manufacturers have done.

But this is the point, with thunderbolt you can expand your Mac's storage & PCI-X capabilities thus elevating the need for a big empty tower you can expand into. As laptops become more powerful most people are going this route simply because they need the expandability of a tower more than the raw power.

The Mac Mini could easily take the place of the Pro with the right thunderbolt accessories, if Apple invests in a few key devices such as a PCI-X card housing and a storage housing then I think we could see the Mini become the new desktop. Might still be nice to have a souped up mini with more cores & such, that might be worthwhile.

ugh, every time this comes up I have to tell this story, and hope Apple realizes there is NOTHING to replace the MP were they to stop making them. Nothing...

I have a 2007 Mac Pro 1,1 with 3880 graphics, 6TB drive storage space and 16GB memory. I bought it when the first Aluminum iMacs appeared but were short on stock, and I had a major book project coming up that was too much for my aging Powerbook. I wanted the iMac, but couldn't wait six weeks for them to ship. My wife told me to just get the Mac Pro, that it would probably last much longer. Boy was she right.

It's still a current, modern machine, and workhorse, a beast, what have you. It runs Lion without a hitch. Photoshop, InDesign, Aperture and Final Cut like a champ. My wife, meanwhile, is limping along with an Aluminum iMac, which beach balls constantly just running Photoshop on Lion. It wasn't so happy with 10.6 either. My Mac Pro will easily last another three years before showing its age. And I've still only half filled its memory slots and could go to 18GB internal storage. It can run three huge displays and dance circles around my friends' brand new MacbookPros.

So tell me, was it overpriced? Is it a dinosaur or boat anchor? I think not. No other configuration will allow that kind of storage, graphics, PCI and memory expansion and look so good doing it. If anything, Apple is under pricing them (provided you don't BTO the RAM, heh heh). If they raise the price, I'll still buy one when I need to replace mine. And if they do discontinue one, I'll sell mine for 1500 bucks and buy a new one as soon as they announce the end of the line. Then I'll still have another 6 years to figure out what's next.

A ramped up Mini? No way the graphics will be good enough. Sure external thunderbolt is ok, and an sad system disk will do internally. But unless they can pack 32GB of memory in there, it'll never run what pros need.

An iMac? ok, as long as I can get to the internals quickly, and without any assistance. My wife's iMac, while expandable, needs complete disassembly of the housing and display just to swap hard drives or upgrade the video card. And the glossy screen is a definite show stopper.

Maybe the Pros will have to pay more to work, while the consumer lines continue to get Apple's love, but if that's what it takes, so be it. I'll just have to charge my clients a few dollars more.

oh, and as for its 8 year old case, it's still the most beautiful tower out there. Have you seen the competition? nasty.

There is a simple solution to this.

Instead of Xeon processors which are an overkill for most people, Apple should offer Core i7 and Core i7 Extreme processors. This will bring the price of the Mac Pro down and allow more people to buy one.

The Xeon processors are an overkill and I really don't understand the advantage the offer over desktop Core i7 processors.




Their prices did go up significantly. Apple should offer the cheaper Core i7 processors, maybe even Core i5 for those who need expandability but don't the overkill Xeon processors. They should sell it with no GPU as an option for those who want to install their own GPU later.

Most Mac apps do use multiple CPUs, all the iApps do for a start. Also, any 64-bit app can use over 4GB of RAM.

If the power of the Mac Pro is disputed, why is it my 2006 MP is still comparable to new iMacs today? An iMac from 2006 with a C2D has no chance of competing, but the Xeons are so well designed that they seem to have the power that the cheap consumer chips can't quite get. They effectively stay faster, for longer.

I just upgraded my G5 Tower to the 8-core Mac Pro. Bought the base version and built it out. Added 2nd video card (running 23" 30" & 23" non-glare Apple monitors), bumped the Ram to 20GB, put the new original 1TB HD in storage (without even starting it up) and put in three 2 TB drives, and transferred a 1.5 TB from the old Mac as the 4th internal drive, giving me 7.5 TBs. Added a Firewire 400 PCI card, and a USB hub. Running 2 printers (one is a large format) 6 TB of external drives, and 2 scanners (flatbed & dedicated slide scanner). Would have put in a USB pci card, but the video graphic card covered to slots so I went with a USB hub instead. Also running a 400 watt THX certified sound system. I also put a Blu-Ray burner in the second optical slot.

I will always need a pro system for my work. And, I spend too many hours working to use glossy monitors so the iMacs won't work for me. Very happy with 3 monitors now instead of just 2 because it really does make working easier. Used my old one with its dual IBM processors for almost 7 years. Hope to get another 7 out of this one.

I agree. An octo "short stack" should be eminently possible to make (think something like a mini-tower, about as big as the old Mac Cube.

If Apple drops the Mac Pro without making another high end alternative I will be throwing Logic and Apple out the door and get a PC with Pro Tools HD...

That goes for the rest of the pro audio marked using Mac as well....

Yeah, and I will dump all my iToys with it......

Excellent point about what the Xserve servers had.

A lot of people think that servers are about raw power and speed...

But what you really need is the "abundancy of redundancy" and LOM(Lights Out Management) to be a true server grade box. To my knowledge the Mac Pro had neither.

Most of the servers I work with are completely headless, as in no video, zip, none nada, and are strictly managed through the LOM ports or SSH shells or VNC. With a LOM port a server can be powered up/down, reimaged, etc. from a maintenance console somewhere else.

While the Mac Mini can be managed pretty good remotely it is still doesn't rise to the level of having real LOM support. Plus it doesn't have redundant power supplies. And installing a new OS remotely would be completely out of the question. The environmental and performance monitoring is not too bad though. And the harddrives could support redundancy through external hardware.

But neither the Mac Pro or the Mac Mini will seriously compete with the Sun or IBM server equipment without LOM. Does Apple even use them for their own server farms? I seriously doubt it.

Remember, what Intel giveth Adobe will surely take away.

Wow, it's like Intel sets their release schedules and prices or something!


Gosh, I have no idea if you're joking here. Seriously, I cannot tell. Given your history, I would think so, but you're so dang smart and the actual numbers show that this statement can't be anything but a joke


You're completely wrong.

I don't like this at all. Not one bit. There are many uses for which the raw horsepower of a many-multi-core Mac Pro is the only viable solution. My Mac Pro is currently 3+ years old (and early 2008 eight-core) and while it works well, I've been patiently waiting for the next version before upgrading. Please, Apple, if you're listening, don't kill off the Mac Pro!!!

this will be the undoing of Apple.