Not that I would ever need a Mac Pro but I believe Apple needs to stay in the pro computer market for all the reasons already posted. It may be a very small portion of Apple's overall business but there's still a certain type of cachet to offer the most powerful 'PC' in the world in the marketplace.
I can certainly understand why Apple decided to scrap the XServe but I don't think it's wise to discontinue the Mac Pro and abandon the loyal pro content creators. My thoughts are that Apple will come up with a new redesigned Mac Pro soon and that the upgrade cycle for this computer will be two years instead of one like Apple does with all the other major products.
Apple is still a personal computer company and I think it makes sense for Apple to cover the gamut from a super powerful workstation-class computer like the Mac Pro down to the iPod touch (as well as the other iPods although dedicated music players is a shrinking market).
Apple is not killing off the Mac Pro, IMO. For a while now, I've seen a lot of conspiracy minded, ignorant people repeating that dumb rumor on forums all over the internet. It doesn't matter how many people repeat it, it doesn't make it anymore true.
Sure, Apple's main source of revenue now is iOS devices, but so fucking what? The value for Apple in keeping the Mac Pro line is more than just about the dollar value and the amount of revenue earned. It would be a big mistake for Apple to abandon it's pro line, and I really don't think that Apple is that dumb. It's not like they're losing money on it.
Mac sales are doing just fine. It's not like the PC market, where sales of PC's are decreasing. Macs are going stronger than ever. iOS devices have actually given Mac sales a big boost. When a newly designed Mac Pro comes out soon, I will be back to laugh at and ridicule all of the clueless people who were wrong about this.
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.
Content creators are in business. As a general rule, they will create content for anyone who pays them with the possible exception of porn. Nothing personal about it.
It's short-sighted for Apple to abandon the server and pro markets. Sure, both markets may be small and costly to maintain but their value lies in things other than direct profits.
Among marketing professionals you often hear about the importance opinion makers play is shaping the average customer's perception of a product or service. Well, in a small way, OS-X server and Mac Pro serve many individuals who in their organizations are the tech opinion makers. To abandon these people or to not even try to go after them is silly and, in a way, arrogant. Apple has the resources and the talent to compete in these areas. It should. These areas and the people that work in tech/science are important to Apple in ways other that a direct profit.
Perhaps another example would be how FORD, HONDA, etc. support auto race teams. The costs for the auto company can be considerable but the races held build brand following and loyalty and it is through that indirect "sale" that they help build and maintain their brand. Apple shouldn't walk away from these two important tech/science markets.
I don't want to be little more than a consumer tech company. I want to be a SCIENCE/TECH COMPUTER USER - who uses a MAC PRO and/or OS-X SERVER.
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.
And what percent of Apple users actually need that much computer.
Keep the MAC PRO box looking exactly the way it does. Who really cares about that? It's a cool looking box and very functional, but really, it's still just a box. Cost to maintain MAC PRO box? zero dollars.
Update the the internals. Just make it a beast that runs OS-X and the techies and science guys will be happy.
Cost to do that? Minimal.
Profit? Minimal.
Will you keep an important segment of the tech world that uses the Mac happy? Yes.
Will you attract new tech/science geeks to the Mac? Yes.
If you kill the MAC PRO will you attract new tech/science geeks to the Mac? No.
I hope they come out with a highly customizable awesome mac case with support for plenty of aftermarket parts. I mean all PCs are the same beast now, including Apple's...
And what percent of Apple users actually need that much computer.
These power Mac Pro users are some of the most loyal and lucrative customers in the Apple camp, that's who. Esp the 'creative professional' types that are the reason the platform is what it is...without whom the world would still be dinking about in DOS and settling for a spreadsheets view of computing.
I, for one, have been using Apple products since 1983, and have at several turns the past decade found myself questioning whether switching to Windows/PC for all my work wouldn't be a more sensible choice...and at each of those turns (replete w/ the thousands of dollars in subsequent capital investment away from the Apple ecosystem they would mean), Apple keeps me by making a better, more flexible product.
Like the Mac Pro I purchased and set up to dual boot in 2008. That robust best-of-both-worlds 'two-computers-in-one' experience has cemented me as an Apple customer for as long as the company makes pro gear. I own Windows gear and am a tech professional (typing on a Sony VAIO right now), but experience has made me one who prefers the pleasure and near painless user experience that Apple brings to the market--and I also buy smartphones and media online etc, and find that Apple serves it up similarly across the board.
If Apple doesn't have a skunk works group somewhere in the company working on a small cluster server using the A9 chip I'd be shocked.
This is one more of those areas where Apple needs to stay in the game. It's not a money maker but it keeps their name out there in these specialized fields. Remember the press Apple received from the super computer cluster built at Virginia Tech? What a bonus for the marketing guys. I doubt if Apple sold one more of those set ups, but who really cares? It was the press they got out of that one super computer that was the payoff.
That replacement however will be targetted at higher end users.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Apple ][
Apple is not killing off the Mac Pro, IMO. For a while now, I've seen a lot of conspiracy minded, ignorant people repeating that dumb rumor on forums all over the internet. It doesn't matter how many people repeat it, it doesn't make it anymore true.
It is sort of like the global warming crowd arguing that the glaciers are melting when repeated sound scientific research has shown them to be gaining mass. Sadly the net is full of people that have nothing better to do than to fret over something not in their control.
You have to seriously wonder how many people out there truly expect the Mac Pro to look the same forever or for that matter to have the same name. It is pretty foolish to expect that the Pros design is engraved in stone.
Quote:
Sure, Apple's main source of revenue now is iOS devices, but so fucking what? The value for Apple in keeping the Mac Pro line is more than just about the dollar value and the amount of revenue earned. It would be a big mistake for Apple to abandon it's pro line, and I really don't think that Apple is that dumb. It's not like they're losing money on it.
More importantly Apple continues to gain market share and increased quarterly sales. Time is actually rip for a total revamp of the entire Mac lineup. I don't think Applle will abandon professional users at all, however I'm not so dense that I expect to see the "Pro Desktop" delivered in the same box forever. Further I expect architecture changes that will result in even more Pro like performance.
Quote:
Mac sales are doing just fine. It's not like the PC market, where sales of PC's are decreasing. Macs are going stronger than ever.
Exactly. More so this is happening in an otherwise down market. Even if sales are only growing 5% a quarter that is still outstanding considering what is happening to the competition. People in the forums can ignore this but I bet nobody at Apple is. Their challenge now is to cleanup the desktop lineup and populate it such that they have hardware suitable for the next 5-10 years.
Quote:
iOS devices have actually given Mac sales a big boost. When a newly designed Mac Pro comes out soon, I will be back to laugh at and ridicule all of the clueless people who were wrong about this.
Well I'm not convinced one bit that iOS devices have anything to do withit. At least not considering indications I've gotten from some new Mac owners. Rather it is a disgust with MicroSoft that seems to be a driver.
As to the clueless that I agree with. Especially the idiots threading to jump ship simply because 1 <ONE> company has shipped a Sandy Bridge E machine. Frankly it makes these people look rather pathetic to express themselves this way. The time to judge Apple is after they have laid out their new desktop lineup. That will likely happen before the end of June.
Everyone just needs to relax, go to the beach and erase a few Bikinis in your minds!
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.
Apple is planning a significant update to Final Cut Pro X that will deliver a number of new features, including multichannel audio editing and dual viewers, when it debuts later this year.
This is directly from Apple as stated from an article from Sunday. They also will be supporting the RED camera. Footage from that alone needs huge amounts of storage and RAM for processing since they are supporting the RED format for direct editing.
If Apple is committed to improving and updating FCP X then coming out with the updates stated will need lots of storage space within a Mac Pro and Thunderbolt multi-drive external RAID for backup. The two go naturally together. Besides adding the newer and faster INTEL processors, who knows what else they have in mind with hardware and with Lion or Mountain Lion to work along with it. After all, 4TB drives are now available, too.
So, I can't believe that in any way they would be abandoning the Mac Pro but are going to enhance it. I got my 3.33ghz 6 core with an SSD in the second DVD bay for my boot and maxed out the drives. OWC did a great job with it and I will use them again when needed for the newer Mac Pro coming out.
What Apple has to realize is that the true "Pro" users will get what they need, even if they have to go back to - God forbid- a Windows Workstation. HP, Dell and others already have the current Xeons out and available. Should Apple abandon this crowd, they will simply move to Windows. They have work that needs to be done, and most, if not all (excepting maybe FCP) software is available on both platforms.
Mainly because ARM sucks for the type of workloads Apple users commonly deal with.
One thing that seems to have been glossed over recently is that we are in the era of 4GHz CPUs running i86_64 code. That is a whole lotta performance in a desktop box these days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CLUSTERSandPROS
CLUSTER SKUNK WORKS!
If Apple doesn't have a skunk works group somewhere in the company working on a small cluster server using the A9 chip I'd be shocked.
I'd be shocked if they did. Apple left the server business where such a chip might work well.
Quote:
This is one more of those areas where Apple needs to stay in the game. It's not a money maker but it keeps their name out there in these specialized fields. Remember the press Apple received from the super computer cluster built at Virginia Tech? What a bonus for the marketing guys. I doubt if Apple sold one more of those set ups, but who really cares? It was the press they got out of that one super computer that was the payoff.
Apple, stay in the high end games.
The only indications that Apple is leaving the Pro computer market comes from a bunch of worry warts that have no knowledge of what Apple is doing or for that matter grasp Intels role in this long drawn out story.
Apple will have a Pro desktop solution, I just don't expect it to look like a Mac Pro.
Comments
I can certainly understand why Apple decided to scrap the XServe but I don't think it's wise to discontinue the Mac Pro and abandon the loyal pro content creators. My thoughts are that Apple will come up with a new redesigned Mac Pro soon and that the upgrade cycle for this computer will be two years instead of one like Apple does with all the other major products.
Apple is still a personal computer company and I think it makes sense for Apple to cover the gamut from a super powerful workstation-class computer like the Mac Pro down to the iPod touch (as well as the other iPods although dedicated music players is a shrinking market).
Sure, Apple's main source of revenue now is iOS devices, but so fucking what? The value for Apple in keeping the Mac Pro line is more than just about the dollar value and the amount of revenue earned. It would be a big mistake for Apple to abandon it's pro line, and I really don't think that Apple is that dumb. It's not like they're losing money on it.
Mac sales are doing just fine. It's not like the PC market, where sales of PC's are decreasing. Macs are going stronger than ever. iOS devices have actually given Mac sales a big boost. When a newly designed Mac Pro comes out soon, I will be back to laugh at and ridicule all of the clueless people who were wrong about this.
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.
Content creators are in business. As a general rule, they will create content for anyone who pays them with the possible exception of porn. Nothing personal about it.
Among marketing professionals you often hear about the importance opinion makers play is shaping the average customer's perception of a product or service. Well, in a small way, OS-X server and Mac Pro serve many individuals who in their organizations are the tech opinion makers. To abandon these people or to not even try to go after them is silly and, in a way, arrogant. Apple has the resources and the talent to compete in these areas. It should. These areas and the people that work in tech/science are important to Apple in ways other that a direct profit.
Perhaps another example would be how FORD, HONDA, etc. support auto race teams. The costs for the auto company can be considerable but the races held build brand following and loyalty and it is through that indirect "sale" that they help build and maintain their brand. Apple shouldn't walk away from these two important tech/science markets.
I don't want to be little more than a consumer tech company. I want to be a SCIENCE/TECH COMPUTER USER - who uses a MAC PRO and/or OS-X SERVER.
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.
And what percent of Apple users actually need that much computer.
Update the the internals. Just make it a beast that runs OS-X and the techies and science guys will be happy.
Cost to do that? Minimal.
Profit? Minimal.
Will you keep an important segment of the tech world that uses the Mac happy? Yes.
Will you attract new tech/science geeks to the Mac? Yes.
If you kill the MAC PRO will you attract new tech/science geeks to the Mac? No.
And what percent of Apple users actually need that much computer.
These power Mac Pro users are some of the most loyal and lucrative customers in the Apple camp, that's who. Esp the 'creative professional' types that are the reason the platform is what it is...without whom the world would still be dinking about in DOS and settling for a spreadsheets view of computing.
I, for one, have been using Apple products since 1983, and have at several turns the past decade found myself questioning whether switching to Windows/PC for all my work wouldn't be a more sensible choice...and at each of those turns (replete w/ the thousands of dollars in subsequent capital investment away from the Apple ecosystem they would mean), Apple keeps me by making a better, more flexible product.
Like the Mac Pro I purchased and set up to dual boot in 2008. That robust best-of-both-worlds 'two-computers-in-one' experience has cemented me as an Apple customer for as long as the company makes pro gear. I own Windows gear and am a tech professional (typing on a Sony VAIO right now), but experience has made me one who prefers the pleasure and near painless user experience that Apple brings to the market--and I also buy smartphones and media online etc, and find that Apple serves it up similarly across the board.
When they don't, I will look elsewhere.
If Apple doesn't have a skunk works group somewhere in the company working on a small cluster server using the A9 chip I'd be shocked.
This is one more of those areas where Apple needs to stay in the game. It's not a money maker but it keeps their name out there in these specialized fields. Remember the press Apple received from the super computer cluster built at Virginia Tech? What a bonus for the marketing guys. I doubt if Apple sold one more of those set ups, but who really cares? It was the press they got out of that one super computer that was the payoff.
Apple, stay in the high end games.
The inventory has since, but before it went to go far as decided to look like.
Apple is not killing off the Mac Pro, IMO. For a while now, I've seen a lot of conspiracy minded, ignorant people repeating that dumb rumor on forums all over the internet. It doesn't matter how many people repeat it, it doesn't make it anymore true.
It is sort of like the global warming crowd arguing that the glaciers are melting when repeated sound scientific research has shown them to be gaining mass. Sadly the net is full of people that have nothing better to do than to fret over something not in their control.
You have to seriously wonder how many people out there truly expect the Mac Pro to look the same forever or for that matter to have the same name. It is pretty foolish to expect that the Pros design is engraved in stone.
Sure, Apple's main source of revenue now is iOS devices, but so fucking what? The value for Apple in keeping the Mac Pro line is more than just about the dollar value and the amount of revenue earned. It would be a big mistake for Apple to abandon it's pro line, and I really don't think that Apple is that dumb. It's not like they're losing money on it.
More importantly Apple continues to gain market share and increased quarterly sales. Time is actually rip for a total revamp of the entire Mac lineup. I don't think Applle will abandon professional users at all, however I'm not so dense that I expect to see the "Pro Desktop" delivered in the same box forever. Further I expect architecture changes that will result in even more Pro like performance.
Mac sales are doing just fine. It's not like the PC market, where sales of PC's are decreasing. Macs are going stronger than ever.
Exactly. More so this is happening in an otherwise down market. Even if sales are only growing 5% a quarter that is still outstanding considering what is happening to the competition. People in the forums can ignore this but I bet nobody at Apple is. Their challenge now is to cleanup the desktop lineup and populate it such that they have hardware suitable for the next 5-10 years.
iOS devices have actually given Mac sales a big boost. When a newly designed Mac Pro comes out soon, I will be back to laugh at and ridicule all of the clueless people who were wrong about this.
Well I'm not convinced one bit that iOS devices have anything to do withit. At least not considering indications I've gotten from some new Mac owners. Rather it is a disgust with MicroSoft that seems to be a driver.
As to the clueless that I agree with. Especially the idiots threading to jump ship simply because 1 <ONE> company has shipped a Sandy Bridge E machine. Frankly it makes these people look rather pathetic to express themselves this way. The time to judge Apple is after they have laid out their new desktop lineup. That will likely happen before the end of June.
Everyone just needs to relax, go to the beach and erase a few Bikinis in your minds!
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.
Apple is planning a significant update to Final Cut Pro X that will deliver a number of new features, including multichannel audio editing and dual viewers, when it debuts later this year.
This is directly from Apple as stated from an article from Sunday. They also will be supporting the RED camera. Footage from that alone needs huge amounts of storage and RAM for processing since they are supporting the RED format for direct editing.
If Apple is committed to improving and updating FCP X then coming out with the updates stated will need lots of storage space within a Mac Pro and Thunderbolt multi-drive external RAID for backup. The two go naturally together. Besides adding the newer and faster INTEL processors, who knows what else they have in mind with hardware and with Lion or Mountain Lion to work along with it. After all, 4TB drives are now available, too.
So, I can't believe that in any way they would be abandoning the Mac Pro but are going to enhance it. I got my 3.33ghz 6 core with an SSD in the second DVD bay for my boot and maxed out the drives. OWC did a great job with it and I will use them again when needed for the newer Mac Pro coming out.
-kpluck
And what percent of Apple users actually need that much computer.
And how may users really "need" an ipad? Who cares basically .
All these articles/speculation about it being discontinued are pure link bait.
Or actual knowledge of future discontinuation. It could happen.
One thing that seems to have been glossed over recently is that we are in the era of 4GHz CPUs running i86_64 code. That is a whole lotta performance in a desktop box these days.
CLUSTER SKUNK WORKS!
If Apple doesn't have a skunk works group somewhere in the company working on a small cluster server using the A9 chip I'd be shocked.
I'd be shocked if they did. Apple left the server business where such a chip might work well.
This is one more of those areas where Apple needs to stay in the game. It's not a money maker but it keeps their name out there in these specialized fields. Remember the press Apple received from the super computer cluster built at Virginia Tech? What a bonus for the marketing guys. I doubt if Apple sold one more of those set ups, but who really cares? It was the press they got out of that one super computer that was the payoff.
Apple, stay in the high end games.
The only indications that Apple is leaving the Pro computer market comes from a bunch of worry warts that have no knowledge of what Apple is doing or for that matter grasp Intels role in this long drawn out story.
Apple will have a Pro desktop solution, I just don't expect it to look like a Mac Pro.
Profit? Minimal.
Case closed.