Cnet announces Mac Pro EOl!

Yes, because they'd know…

And then he cries over a G5…

Let's assume for a second that it is EOL, what are the 260k per quarter (maximum) Mac Pro buyers going to do?

A portion of them will have no choice but to buy another Mac model and a portion will migrate to another platform.

Whatever happens, the number of users affected by the discontinuation of the Mac Pro will be negligible.

It was never a matter of 'if' but a matter of 'when'. Usually Apple pulls the plug too soon but I don't think now is too soon.

The only reservation I have is that Intel build Xeons the way they do for a reason. They are the best chips they know how to build. If Apple doesn't want to give up on that option then they have no other choice but to put one in the iMac or Mini or some other form factor machine.

I think all will be revealed in under 8 weeks.

The Mac Pro could be dead making way for a differently named workstation that is perhaps smaller and lighter.

Maybe we can't get any hints from the Mac Pro Development team because they have already left the building.

The only development team that has left any building is AIM's and the AIM building.

The only thing that's about to die for certain is iChat's functionality

People still use that? Also I've never seen one poster make so many threads on a topic.

If you use iChat, yes. Plenty of people use iChat.

Like the Mac Mini?

Or one that includes a screen aka the iMac?

Seriously, if Apple re-factors the Pro into some Cube renaissance I'd be the first out in public open whacking off outside an Apple Store.

Four models. £999 above the Mac Mini up to £2000. Priced to go. iMac sexy desktop chic vs raw sex Cube-esque.

(Must be my time of the week...)

Lemon Bon Bon.

I did like the guy crying over his Mac Pro. 'Blubber...NOOOOoooooo....' :P

'I feel for you, man...'

Lemon Bon Bon.

G5 was great. Years ahed of its competition. It was fun back in PPC days when you could have something that was faster then Intel and had better hardware.

To bad that IBM f-ed up and could not deliver 3ghz parts to Apple. Somehow they could deliver 3ghz parts to MSFT.

G5 lives today inside the Xbox360. The only reason why I bought one on launch day.

And for MacPro EOL.

Intel killed MacPro with their insane XEON prices. When AMD could not compete, Intel raised prices 300% with Nehalem. In 2006 you could get a 8 core MacPro about 2K dollars.
2008 the cheapest was 3500 dollar. The price hike thanks to Intels processors. From 300 dollars to about 1000 dollar a pop.

Today Intels highend Xeons costs the same as HighEnd RISC did 10 years ago. The cheapest Intel highend Xeon is over 4000dollars.

I would be fun with dual 10 core/20 thread Intel inside a MacPro, but the computer would cost over 10000 dollars.
For that price you can get Power Workstations with much better performance.

For Apple to release bumped MacPros, its minimal work. We are talking software drivers. The motherboards are designed by intel.

The market place for MacPro is almost dead. Disc and PCI cards can be added using thunderbolt today. You can buy 2 MacMini for the price of a single Xeon processor. Its today better to buy a highend iMac and use other computers in the grid for heavy computing.

My dream is Xgrid for iOS. Almost all iOS users have more then 1 device. Why not have Xgrid? The devices are on 24/7. When you need processor power on you ipad, why not take CPU cykles from the Iphone? All this is possible thanks to Unix. This have been standard for UnixWS the last 20 years.

*applauds post. Bravo.

Strange. You're not the first poster to mention the Xeon price hike. Ye-ouch. I remember it like it was yesterday. It put the Mac Pro beyond my reach (and no doubt, many other artists and creative pros...)

And the nod to the iOS hub drawing on the collective computing power (I have an iMac, ATV, iPad, iPhone...some people have wayyy more Apple devices...)...isn't it getting near the time when we should get them all working via Open CL or an X-Grid or something? OS X does Unix. It is Unix. Hell, Apple put Mac OS on Unix.

Enjoyed reading your post. Insightful summing up of Apple's dilemma with the Mac Pro and it's 'value equation' relative to performance. There's plenty of blame to go around on the lack of Mac Pro update.

Lemon Bon Bon.

300% is quite a hit.

I also remember the entry iMac price going from £675 (?) to £995 back in 2008(?) The Mac Mini going from dedicated to integrated gpu and getting a price hike. Used to be £300-ish. Not it's £500 give or take.

I'm sure the Apple shareholders aren't complaining though. And Apple Mac sales are at an all time high.

But Mac Pro sales aren't.

Lemon Bon Bon.

The relative value and performance of the Mini and iMac means there's less reason to mortgage your gran to buy a Pro. Fewer people need absolute power at insane prices. The tower looks dated as well.

Many PC sellers are offering slim line towers/compacts. Hey, it's there, crappy windows or not. Even HP are offering an 'iMac' like 'z' AIO workstation with easy access.

Come on, Apple. When was the last time you wowed us with your desktop line?

Lemon Bon Bon.

Are Apple getting comfortable with their evolutionary approach and a pile of cash?

Maybe they don't have to do anything but kill the Pro and shave some alu off the iMac's chin while they fry bigger fish with iOS.

The next year should tell us plenty about where the desktop Macs are going. 26% of sales may give us nothing more than evolutionary updates from here on in...

Mind you, Tim said that the Mac was still important. *(Gulps as he sees the iOS features creeping over to the Mac...)

Lemon Bon Bon.

Agree.


IBM screwed-up, but the screw-up was with heat management, not clock speed. The fastest processor available in any Mac today is a 3.4 GHz i7-based iMac. The fastest PPC-based Macs had 2.7 GHz processors. Strictly in terms of clock speed, they had faster clocks than the vast majority of Intel-based Macs available today.

IBM screwed the pooch when it refused Steve Job's plea to reduce the PPC's heat generation. Ironically, heat generation had been a major PPC advantage over Intel x86. Without this advantage, the G4 Cube would not have been possible. However, the G4 was a Motorola/Freescale processor. The G5 was IBM and IBM is Big Iron.

The first G5s ran so hot that they required mated processor/cooling modules. Subsequent G5s required liquid cooling. In the meantime, Intel had developed new materials processing fabrication techniques that finally conquered the heat problems that had dogged it since the 386.


Don't confuse bare processors with complete systems. Having said that, Intel manufactures some very low-end processors. However, if you want something that will boot-up this week, then Intel makes you pay. Despite their economies of scale, Intel processors have always been more expensive than PPC processors of comparable or superior performance.

The enormous price of the Intel-based Mac Pro is the reason that I have not replaced my Power Mac G5s. My G5s were in a line of price/performance that left me feeling justified in paying more for my Macs than colleagues paid for their DOS/Windows boxes. I purchased Macs with my own funds in 1989, 1996, and 2004. I have also purchased Macs at work. For each personal purchase, I paid roughly the same nominal amount. However, the computer was near the top-of-the-line for its time and provided a massive increase in productivity. That nominal amount was about $5200 US. Over the past 2-3 years, I have priced-out Mac Pros. To get a computer near the top-of-the-line, I will have to pay something in the neighborhood of $10,000. Ouch!

Then I look at my G5s. They still work great. I have a 2009 MacBook Pro for those times when I absolutely need something Intel-based.


Let's not go too far over the top here. Does any Wintel OEM sell EFI-based boxes? If not, then all of the development costs for Intel-based Apple computers are borne by Apple irrespective of who designs them. We know enough about Apple to know that Apple is not a passive customer for Intel-based motherboards.


There is a small problem with this idea. iOS mobile devices are battery-powered. They drink battery power while they communicate. Without question, my iPhone has the computer power to handle the job. As a matter of economics, however, it is not a good idea. The price that you pay for an iPhone is the price necessary to make it a great phone, personal assistant, and gaming device. Most of that money is wasted if you convert it into a cluster node.

Well again you are relying on rumors which is foolish.

In any event Apple will dump the Mac Pro, that is almost a given as I doubt very much that they sell more than 50,000 a quarter. 50,000 is probably on the large size too. However I fully expect a replacement for the Pro that will appeal to a wider array of users. It is the only rational course of action for Apple if they wish to maintain a position on the desktop.

If Apple is making zero dollars off of the Mac Pro, a real possibility, then it must go. They need a machine that is far more affordable and has a feature set that is wide enough to appeal to multiple types of users. Frankly the current Mac Pro is not really suitable to attract a wide audience which is why it's sales suck so.

I'm not sure why this BS flys so well on this forum as it is complete ignorance. Mac OS and Mac hardware have been doing extremely well for Apple and stands in stark contrast to the rest of the PC marketplace. Killing the Pro is about business because no matter how many people whine on this forum about how important the Pro is its sales have declined significantly to the point no money is made off the unit.

The only rational course of action is for Apple to try something else.

We should have a good grasp of things by the middle of the year. In the end it only depends upon what direction Apple wants to take with the replacement unit. It could be built around standard desktop parts or that recently announced Intel supper chip.

Again though NOBODY should get excited about the Mac Pro until we start to see real shipment volumes of the types of processors and GPUs likely to go into a next generation machine. That means at least two more months.

This is another bit of BS I don't understand, the changes to Mac OS have been very beneficial. Especially if you tend to use a Mac in conjunction with an iOS device. More so each release of Mac OS has been dramatically improving the core OS, adding features power users can use and generally leading to better overall functionality.

So really what is your problem here? I have to ask because generally I'm very happy with the direction Mac OS is going. Do you not like better performance and expanded features in the supplied software?

By the way there are a few things I could do without but I fully understand the concept of taking the good with the bad.

I won't go that far but I sure wish there was something without a screen between the mini and the Pro. A cube with iMac parts would work for me.

I've seen some tasty conjecture online about a modular aluminum cube that's stackable, gangable via thunderbolt, etc. Can't remember where. I'd buy one. The Mac Pro Cube. Just add more cubes for more processing power.

That's the Apple Pro you're thinking of. It's the successor to the Mac Pro. Release date is unknown, but working prototypes have been in the field for some time.

There were a few innacuracies in that report. Apparently, both i7 and Xeon variants exist, which explains the prototype cube's size, it's built to cool Xeons, not i7s. In any event, it may be possible to cluster 16 core xeon cubes using Apple Galaxy over Thunderbolt.

It appears Apple wasn't content with the Mac Pro because it had nothing to differentiate it from windows Xeon workstations. Not so with the Apple Pro. Things are about to get very intersting on the desktop front...

Yes, well, when you can provide any sort of proof of this, we'll take it seriously.

What would you have me do? Get video up of my Silicon Valley buddy being polygraphed?

The truth is, Apple will lose the pro market segment if their only desktop offering is an all in one. Pros need flexibility with displays (actually more than Pros need this flexibility, but it's a deal breaker for pros). Losing the pro market isn't only about sales, it's also about influence. If the Pros stop using Macs, their choice will reverberate through the whole market. Apple will not let this happen, and we know the Mac Pro is history, so logically a replacement is imminent.

My report details one of Apple's ideas that's now in the field. Some other prototype may finally get the nod for production, but as my friend said, Galaxy has been in testing for longer than the Apple Pro, so it's a safe bet that any successor to the Mac Pro will be capable of Thunderbolt clustering. Clustering "iMac Pros" wouldn't make any sense, so clearly there is a Mac Pro successor. The exact form and specs are trivial, we already know it will be revolutionary. Steve Jobs will rock the pro desktop market from his grave.

A picture of one of the Galaxy cubes in an elevator would suffice. A 'Silicon Valley guy' can lie through his teeth more often than not.

Seriously, I absolutely love the idea you've presented: modular cubes that actually DO operate on plug and play power increases

But it's too far-fetched given Apple's history. They don't care about pros or this demographic. Unless they're planning this as a SECOND new computing revolution (the first being multitouch desktop OS'), it's just not believable.


You make a point. But the high-end iMac is certainly powerful enough for many needs. And it's not like Thunderbolt wouldn't give them options.

I hope so.

From what you describe coupled with X-Grid and Open CL, Appel could have a differentiator in workstation dept.

*drools at the thought of it. It's almost sexual.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Easy now, Tal'. Let's me enjoy the fantasy for a while longer before you put ice (cube) on my hot anticipation.

Lemon Bon Bon.

*The idea certainly tantalises. Certainly better than canning the Pro and leaving it at that.

What I like about the idea of the Cube. It could scale from the iMac price range right upto the Pro price range and drive more volume that way. Plus every Cube sale would be a potential Apple monitor sale. Not without it's own significant mark up. If the price is scaleable then it gives people the option to build their own lego stack from the small artist, small company...to medium and large operations.

With Apple's charge into enterprise with iPad and iPhone...to have some scaleable plug and play iron wouldn't be out of step. It could be a good addition in contrast to the hulking and over priced Pro which is somewhat out of touch and out of date.

Lemon Bon Bon.

I agree that the iMac is powerful enough for the needs of most users, even many professionals. Unfortunately, it's a flawed design, even for an all in one. Ever try to replace a hard drive on one? For that matter, why only one hard drive bay? The 27" iMac could easily take a second or even third internal hard drive, and it wouldn't be difficult to make them accessible.

The biggest flaw with the iMac is of course the combination of the display and computer. It's an idiotic idea with any screen, but with a gorgeous 27" IPS LED-backlit display it's criminal. Seriously Apple? So when it's time to upgrade the computer, we're supposed to throw out a high end display? WTF? Offering an all-in-one as part of the desktop lineup is fine, it's a good solution for grannies and very casual users, but for any serious computer users it's an insult.

For almost 15 years Apple has had this gaping hole in their desktop lineup. The Apple Pro will rock, but most likely it will still leave a hole for sub-$2000 desktops. Apple needs an i5/i7 based desktop computer, NOT a headless laptop like the Mini, I'm talking a real desktop with desktop-grade components. Basically, they need to build the computer the Mini should have been. Funny thing, desktop components are cheaper than laptop components, so it will cost Apple less to build it than the Mini. Slap some desktop components in an aluminum box and be done with it!

As for the danger of eating into iMac sales and cutting into Apple's profit margins, that argument held water back when Apple was drowning, but not now. Volume will make up for any loss in profit margins. Offer some more Thunderbolt displays and many desktop buyers will buy them along with their Apple desktop box.

Speaking of Thunderbolt, it's more of a band-aid than a real solution for expansion. Using Thunderbolt to augment an iMac with PCIe cards, hard drives, and the like is a severely expensive proposition, and it's just plain messy to have a desk cluttered with external boxes and rat's nest of cables. TB will also run into bandwidth bottlenecks if used to replicate the expandability of a Mac Pro.

Okay, rant over. Hope I didn't ruffle any fanboy feathers, but Apple's insistence on an all-in-one desktop line has been a thorn in my saddle for what seems like a lifetime.

Enjoyed this post, Junkyard. It's thoughtful and well argued. It makes sense.

Hopefully, we'll see it come to pass.

The point about Apple ceding the 'Pro' market to the competition seems unthinkable. It would be a loss of face (though the billions make compensate them...)

I think many on these boards would be fine with a Pro replacement that's more in keeping with the times.

Maybe Apple can redefine the workstation market in a more accessible way. Maybe we're over due a paradigm shift in this area. Considering what Apple has done in the music, phone, tablet and laptop markets...and to a degree in the desktop market with the iMac (near enough a million seller per quarter is not to be sniffed at...) then the tired Pro could do with re-energizing and imagining.

Apple Pro. 'It's sexual.' *(That would be my marketing tag for it.)

Lemon Bon Bon.

*rubs chin, thoughtfully.

Lemon Bon Bon.

That doesn't imply the design is in any way flawed. The hard drive could be easily changed if they moved to a Mac Pro-style drive drawer.


It does. And yes, they could.


Uh, nope. Which is exactly why the iMac operates AS a display. You want to upgrade, do it. Use the iMac as a display with the hardware turned off. They've been able to do that for years.


And for almost 15 years, Apple's marketshare has increased and profits skyrocketed. Obviously the hole doesn't even exist.


Which is what every PC on the market is and what Apple isn't. There won't be an xMac.


Zero point to that.


Odd that you'd find Apple fans on an Apple fan forum, huh?


So buy from someone else.

Can't the current Mac Pro run through the iMac's monitor?

Lemon Bon Bon.

Yes, but not the current iMac. The display feature only works Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt and Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort for whatever nonsensical reason.

As in professional users. The problem is professional users don't care that much about the Mac Pro anymore. The price structure of the Mac Pro is such that many professionals see a better match for their needs in other Apple products.

As to the instant whining and balling of tears from the so called video professionals in this forum it is pretty obvious that sales from this sector have declined significantly. So in a way they are directly responsible for the lack of attention to the Mac Pro. If an item doesn't sell well Apple obsessing over it won't help.


Yeah like that would happen. I don't know if this is a long running joke or not but I do know that people given access to such hardware are expected to keep their mouths shut.

Building cube like hardware would be easy these days. Hardware isn't the issue, software is. The problem is building software to work on dynamically sized clusters is not easy. More so each app is very specific to a cluster. Honestly unless Apple has some breakthrough software to simplify the management of such clusters and to vastly easy the app developer workload, I just don't see vast number of apps ever coming to such systems.

Hardware easy - software not so easy.

Your statement about Apple and Pro users is just bull crap. If Apple didn't care about Pro users they wouldn't have some of the best laptops out there for Pro users. Even today the Mac Pro is an excellent machine if you are buying one of the higher performance configurations. For people that really need what is inside a Pro, it is totally laughable to even suggest that an iMac is a more powerful machine. In fact there are damn few desktop machines on the market that are more powerful.

You can fidget about all you want about the lack of a Mac Pro update, but the fact remains there have been many factors at work here that have kept a respin off the market. Apple is on the verge of a new product release, I believe that in my bones, not because of all the rumors posted here but because the time is right for such a hardware refactoring. The fact that XMac or whatever you want to call it isn't released yet is not an indicator that Apple doesn't care about Pros. If anything it is just the opposite, they care enough about their products to avoid rushed releases. It would do people well to learn to think positive here.


The so called high end iMac is barely mid level performance hardware. This idea that an iMac can replace the Pro is just garbage. Yes I understand that every year the iMc gets more powerful, something that is likely to accelerate, but software and user demands continue to grow. You also mis the reality that no matter how fast the iMac gets a Mac Pro or it's replacement always has the capability to be much faster and more productive.

You may argue over the above but please don't throw single threaded or poorly threaded software benchmarks at us. In the discussion of the Mac Pro or its replacement, assuch references are meaningless for users of such machines use heavily threaded apps concurrently with many other running processes.

Really? You've not heard the elevator shot bit?


Everything I've seen about the MacBook Pros is that they're mid-range at best. Not saying they're not good laptops, I'm saying they're not seen as "pro" machines. Particularly the ones without dedicated graphics, but all of them.


Today the Mac Pro is the required machine for higher-performance configurations. It's nearly two years old and getting rather slow.


Never said that.


That has never served me well in predicting or hoping for Apple hardware releases.


Nor would I insult anyone's intelligence by doing so. The Mac Pro remains the best at what it's designed to do. There just happens to be more these days that doesn't require a workstation.

I'm not sure how all this non sense about the Pro being canned with no replacement got started. Apple employes smart people, I don't ever think that they would be so stupid as to have the Mini as their only desktop play.

On the other hand I really don't understand this idea that Apple should be able to squat and deliver a brand new Pro computer in the blink of an eye. To be a worthwhile effort the new "Pro" needs a radical forward looking architecture.

I see two models. One would be a Trimty or Ivy Bridge low end machine for general users. The other a Sandy Bridge E with a fast AMD GPu.

Moving iPhone and iPad into enterprise is easy compared to moving into the desktop realm. Desktops are used by enterprise in ways many don't understand in this forum. The place I work at has more "desktop" PCs running in the manufacturing area than it has in its office spaces. They get scattered about wherever a computational block is needed. The problem for Apple here is software and the attractivity of bargain basement pricing.

Apple will never be able to grab a significant proportion of enterprise because it is never even considered by software developers.

What is Apple Galaxy? Is that cluster enabling/management software?

Yeah, he claims the Mac Pro replacement will have plug-and-play expandability via Thunderbolt. You want a faster machine, just buy another cube box and plug it in and the system knows it's faster now.

That would be a great way to saturate the Thunderbolt bus and make it utterly unusable for anything that you would require a cluster in the first place.

Read/Write speeds would be back in the Commodore 64 era.

One possibility would to be to add more ports.

Another is Intels new supper chip with built in Infiniband. This chip would be exactly what Apple would need for a cluster machine.