This is continued from the mini/iMac wishlist topic but I want to keep them separated. Can we all pretty much agree that the retina MacBook Pro is the future and that eventually the unibody MacBook Pro is going away.
Yes, it's clear that the old, thick, and heavy MacBook Pro with the internal optical brick will go away. I guess it will happen with the introduction of Haswell processors, but it might have to wait for the introduction of Broadwell processors. It will depend on relative sales and on Retina display yields.
When Apple are able to consolidate their MacBook Pro line by dropping the internal optical brick, it might be an opportunity to introduce a 17" Retina MacBook Pro. There should be some pent-up demand for a 17" model, which may now be absent due to the low yields and very high cost of 17" Retina displays.
I went into Best Buy tonight and just felt like looking around and saw a Samsung 17" notebook with 2 GB of the 650M for $1,399. Of course I thought that was not too shabby but it dawned on me just before I wrote this that it's useless if it isn't GDDR5 memory but DDR3.
The software on this forum is doing weird things to my posts, so I am rewriting. I deleted a bunch of stuff and rewrote before, then it posted the old stuff. I'm not sure what is wrong. Anyway I was going to say I dislike the consumer grade notebooks, and the requirements for things like gaming tend to be a bit different than offloaded computation or OpenGL apps where a high degree of precision is required (CAD or 3D apps). Video ram is frequently listed as a parameter when it comes to minimum spec requirements in specialized apps, so it tends to be a bigger deal to me. I pay attention in the case of Apple, as they don't really do specialized hardware. Their line kind of is what it is, so if you use a Mac you have to look at what is available in terms of computers and added peripherals to come up with a complete solution.
Let's continue to debate a possible integrated only 15" rMBP. How much would you price it at? This is important because if you were to introduce it, I think $1,800 is too much.
Of course suppose it was introduced and you had the 13" base at $1,199, the upgraded 13" at $1,499, the base 15" at $1,799, the base discrete at $1,999, and the high end discrete at $2,199.
For the $2,199 model, whatever graphics card is put in, there needs to be an option for maxed out graphics memory or the graphics memory should be maxed out as standard be it 2 GB or 4 GB.
Let's continue to debate a possible integrated only 15" rMBP. How much would you price it at? This is important because if you were to introduce it, I think $1,800 is too much.
Well $1800 would be too much. However the rMBP is marketed to people that could benefit from a discrete GPU even with Haswell. As such I don't think we will see Apple dropping the discrete GPU in rMBP. The qualifier here would be that the current situation remains the same and that there is no OpenCL support yet for the intel chip. If Apple comes out with solid support for OpenCL on Intels GPU then all bets are off.
Of course suppose it was introduced and you had the 13" base at $1,199, the upgraded 13" at $1,499, the base 15" at $1,799, the base discrete at $1,999, and the high end discrete at $2,199.
In general MBP prices are a bit on the rich side, Apple could afford to adjust pricing some.
For the $2,199 model, whatever graphics card is put in, there needs to be an option for maxed out graphics memory or the graphics memory should be maxed out as standard be it 2 GB or 4 GB.
Well this I have to agree with, Apple is just plain stingy when it comes to memory of any type. The interesting thing here is that Haswell supposedly supports uniform access to system memory. If Apple can alter Mac OS to support this the days of worrying about system RAM dedicated to a GPU will be gone. Software often lags hardware with respect to capabilities like this so Haswell could become one of those bastards that are transitional. Frankly at this point we don't know how Apple will go about supporting GPUs as equals when it comes to memory management. Due to this lag the full capabilities of Haswell may never be realized in Mac OS.
Let's continue to debate a possible integrated only 15" rMBP. How much would you price it at? This is important because if you were to introduce it, I think $1,800 is too much.
Well $1800 would be too much. However the rMBP is marketed to people that could benefit from a discrete GPU even with Haswell. As such I don't think we will see Apple dropping the discrete GPU in rMBP. The qualifier here would be that the current situation remains the same and that there is no OpenCL support yet for the intel chip. If Apple comes out with solid support for OpenCL on Intels GPU then all bets are off.
Of course suppose it was introduced and you had the 13" base at $1,199, the upgraded 13" at $1,499, the base 15" at $1,799, the base discrete at $1,999, and the high end discrete at $2,199.
In general MBP prices are a bit on the rich side, Apple could afford to adjust pricing some.
For the $2,199 model, whatever graphics card is put in, there needs to be an option for maxed out graphics memory or the graphics memory should be maxed out as standard be it 2 GB or 4 GB.
Well this I have to agree with, Apple is just plain stingy when it comes to memory of any type. The interesting thing here is that Haswell supposedly supports uniform access to system memory. If Apple can alter Mac OS to support this the days of worrying about system RAM dedicated to a GPU will be gone. Software often lags hardware with respect to capabilities like this so Haswell could become one of those bastards that are transitional. Frankly at this point we don't know how Apple will go about supporting GPUs as equals when it comes to memory management. Due to this lag the full capabilities of Haswell may never be realized in Mac OS.
Let's continue to debate a possible integrated only 15" rMBP. How much would you price it at? This is important because if you were to introduce it, I think $1,800 is too much.
Well $1800 would be too much. However the rMBP is marketed to people that could benefit from a discrete GPU even with Haswell. As such I don't think we will see Apple dropping the discrete GPU in rMBP. The qualifier here would be that the current situation remains the same and that there is no OpenCL support yet for the intel chip. If Apple comes out with solid support for OpenCL on Intels GPU then all bets are off.
Of course suppose it was introduced and you had the 13" base at $1,199, the upgraded 13" at $1,499, the base 15" at $1,799, the base discrete at $1,999, and the high end discrete at $2,199.
In general MBP prices are a bit on the rich side, Apple could afford to adjust pricing some.
For the $2,199 model, whatever graphics card is put in, there needs to be an option for maxed out graphics memory or the graphics memory should be maxed out as standard be it 2 GB or 4 GB.
Well this I have to agree with, Apple is just plain stingy when it comes to memory of any type. The interesting thing here is that Haswell supposedly supports uniform access to system memory. If Apple can alter Mac OS to support this the days of worrying about system RAM dedicated to a GPU will be gone. Software often lags hardware with respect to capabilities like this so Haswell could become one of those bastards that are transitional. Frankly at this point we don't know how Apple will go about supporting GPUs as equals when it comes to memory management. Due to this lag the full capabilities of Haswell may never be realized in Mac OS.
According to nVidia, the 750M is supposed to be 6.5x faster than the Intel HD 4000. We'll see how it fares next to Haswell.
They are claiming the 750M is 75% faster than the 650M too though. It's only clocked 15-30% faster and the same architecture.
They list the 650M as being 4.5x faster than the HD4000. So 6.5/4.5 means the 750M is only 44% faster than the 650M but they say 75%. They're just trying to use the best numbers in all cases.
You can see the benchmarks between the HD4000 and 650M:
In almost every test, the difference is closer to 3x faster. NVidia is using a single best case for marketing.
Assuming that the 650M is 3x faster than the HD4000 and Haswell is 2x faster, that means the 650M would remain 1.5x faster. That means Haswell would be closer to the 640M. What's funny is they list the 640M as 4x faster than the HD4000, which would make the 650M only 12% faster, which is true in some cases but not most cases. It's basically any numbers to make them look better than Intel.
Performance is going to vary between different tests but Haswell should at least bring the IGP to the 640M, which is a decent level of performance. If it goes in the entry 15" MBP so they can sell a rMBP at $1799, it might seem disappointing vs the 750M but not so much vs the 650M.
Now the question is how much video memory the 15" MBP and even the iMac have with the new cards. Hopefully none of them have 512 MB and the MBP has 2 GB somewhere.
Assuming that the 650M is 3x faster than the HD4000 and Haswell is 2x faster, that means the 650M would remain 1.5x faster. That means Haswell would be closer to the 640M. What's funny is they list the 640M as 4x faster than the HD4000, which would make the 650M only 12% faster, which is true in some cases but not most cases. It's basically any numbers to make them look better than Intel.
Performance is going to vary between different tests but Haswell should at least bring the IGP to the 640M, which is a decent level of performance. If it goes in the entry 15" MBP so they can sell a rMBP at $1799, it might seem disappointing vs the 750M but not so much vs the 650M.
Drivers and supported functions are sometimes more important than raw performance numbers, but it depends on the targeted range for the machine. They have to determine who might buy it.
So have the classic 15" be integrated only? I wouldn't mind that with a price drop.
What do you mean by classic 15" ??? Do you mean non-Retina? It is possible that Apple might offer non-Retina MBPs with Haswell, but I would be surprised. I'm not even sure that Apple will offer non-Retina MBAs with Haswell.
I'm not even sure that Apple will offer non-Retina MBAs with Haswell.
The retina versions received minor revisions recently. The classic versions went untouched. The older style still exists as selling the rMBP at those price points would likely lead to either supply constraints or margins that are not in line with Apple's expectations. In either case these remain the entry level notebooks within Apple's lineup, in spite of being over $1000 regardless and closer to $1400 with a decent configuration. I suspect it will be another year before you see retina Airs, but I have been wrong before. I also thought an imac redesign would come this year after further studying of various screen treatments at the smaller sizes, but they have recently accelerated how quickly they propagate certain kinds of changes through the line.
Interesting watching Dell's fall from greatness. Back in the day they used to at least offer ALL the latest and greatest hardware so the customer could max out performance, if so desired. Then they adopted the "its good enough for the masses" idiots philosophy which is stock in trade for bean counters, and since then, major decline. I think this is what Apple may be doing as they abandon their most loyal and biggest spending high end power users who want Mac pros and 17" Macbook Pros with lots of options. The reverse halo effect is never pretty.
Interesting watching Dell's fall from greatness. Back in the day they used to at least offer ALL the latest and greatest hardware so the customer could max out performance, if so desired. Then they adopted the "its good enough for the masses" idiots philosophy which is stock in trade for bean counters, and since then, major decline. I think this is what Apple may be doing as they abandon their most loyal and biggest spending high end power users who want Mac pros and 17" Macbook Pros with lots of options. The reverse halo effect is never pretty.
Not quite. Dell went after high volume at the expense of profits and lowered quality. They only ship something like 3x Apple's volume but make 5% or less net margin vs Apple's 20-25%. Not only that, Apple's average selling price is significantly higher.
They also didn't have a plan B. They saturated their primary market by selling too much too soon and didn't bother thinking about what to do when that happened. They have no real place in the 'post-pc' market.
This is nothing like what Apple is doing at all. Dell also has a healthy workstation market so they didn't sacrifice it in favour of consumers:
"Dell doesn't report operating margins by product category, but if it did there seems little doubt that the enterprise system business is propping up the PC client business, much as was the case with IBM before it sold off its PC business to Lenovo."
In terms of loyalty, Mac Pro buyers think they are the most loyal and biggest spending customers, even when posting things like this:
Buy used or hang onto an old Mac Pro, buy 3rd party components to spec it up and avoid paying for a new one. Guess how much Apple gets out of that. Doing everything possible to avoid paying Apple money is the polar opposite of loyalty.
Apple is currently providing for their most loyal customers - the iMac, Mini, MBA and Macbook Pro buyers, who upgrade regularly and pay for their BTO options. The 17" MBP most likely wasn't regularly upgraded due to the initial price. Apple could bring it back if there's a price gap when the rMBP price drops but 17" MBP buyers are no more important than 15" MBP buyers. There is an assumption that paying $2500 for a machine makes you a better customer than one paying $1800. It's not the case unless they have the same upgrade cycle, which is not likely, given that one of the primary reasons people give for paying more is 'it lasts longer'.
There's no sense in abandoning a high profit margin sector for the sake of it and Apple hasn't for now but it wouldn't affect the company in either the short or long term if they did. Apple is continuing to deliver quality products at a premium with high resolution, anti-glare, IPS displays with the highest-end desktop/laptop CPUs Intel offers with high performance features like Thunderbolt, fast GPUs and fast SSD drives.
Buy used or hang onto an old Mac Pro, buy 3rd party components to spec it up and avoid paying for a new one. Guess how much Apple gets out of that. Doing everything possible to avoid paying Apple money is the polar opposite of loyalty.
Apple is currently providing for their most loyal customers - the iMac, Mini, MBA and Macbook Pro buyers, who upgrade regularly and pay for their BTO options. The 17" MBP most likely wasn't regularly upgraded due to the initial price. Apple could bring it back if there's a price gap when the rMBP price drops but 17" MBP buyers are no more important than 15" MBP buyers. There is an assumption that paying $2500 for a machine makes you a better customer than one paying $1800. It's not the case unless they have the same upgrade cycle, which is not likely, given that one of the primary reasons people give for paying more is 'it lasts longer'.
You make way too many assertions from a couple forum posts. Beyond that you can't even make such an upgrade with a meaningful generation gap. Note how it's 4,1 -> 5,1. That's a 2009 vs 2010 configuration. The 2012 is just the same as the 2010 with a couple specs shuffled. The only part worth addressing is that growth in software demands hasn't been entirely consistent, so people may be holding onto these things for longer periods of time. The really interesting things to me are technologies like CUDA where basic workstations can leverage things that used to be the domain of smaller node based servers, but it's no different from anything that has happened before. Minicomputers could never handle mainframe loads. Desktop workstations could never replace dedicated hardware. I could probably think of more cliches, but they're all the same concept. Mac Pro like machines aren't exactly at the very top. They are a smaller market, but whoever owns these divisions, they will be around for some time. That doesn't mean Apple will maintain interest.
You know what the problem is. When you hold onto hardware for 6 years, the resale value is gone so it's a much better option to upgrade components than to buy new.
The only part worth addressing is that growth in software demands hasn't been entirely consistent, so people may be holding onto these things for longer periods of time.
Mac Pro like machines aren't exactly at the very top. They are a smaller market, but whoever owns these divisions, they will be around for some time. That doesn't mean Apple will maintain interest.
Eventually, even big iron servers will be disposable non-serviceable units. I guess the next generation of the iMac and the Mac Mini will be completely sealed and just as upgradeable as an iPad. The Mac Pro will probably be the last Mac to not even have user installable memory, but it will eventually happen.
To those who say they will never buy one, fine, keep using 201x hardware until it dies -- even when eyeglasses have 100x more computing power than your Mac Pro.
Twisted logic on so many levels. Fact: I personally know many users in LA who work in pro audio waiting for another 17". Its not that anyone is "MORE IMPORTANT", lol. It's still an important and high spending sector who use these for a living, just like Mac pro users. You may be happy with what;s available NOW, I and many others are not.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
This is continued from the mini/iMac wishlist topic but I want to keep them separated. Can we all pretty much agree that the retina MacBook Pro is the future and that eventually the unibody MacBook Pro is going away.
Yes, it's clear that the old, thick, and heavy MacBook Pro with the internal optical brick will go away. I guess it will happen with the introduction of Haswell processors, but it might have to wait for the introduction of Broadwell processors. It will depend on relative sales and on Retina display yields.
When Apple are able to consolidate their MacBook Pro line by dropping the internal optical brick, it might be an opportunity to introduce a 17" Retina MacBook Pro. There should be some pent-up demand for a 17" model, which may now be absent due to the low yields and very high cost of 17" Retina displays.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
I went into Best Buy tonight and just felt like looking around and saw a Samsung 17" notebook with 2 GB of the 650M for $1,399. Of course I thought that was not too shabby but it dawned on me just before I wrote this that it's useless if it isn't GDDR5 memory but DDR3.
The software on this forum is doing weird things to my posts, so I am rewriting. I deleted a bunch of stuff and rewrote before, then it posted the old stuff. I'm not sure what is wrong. Anyway I was going to say I dislike the consumer grade notebooks, and the requirements for things like gaming tend to be a bit different than offloaded computation or OpenGL apps where a high degree of precision is required (CAD or 3D apps). Video ram is frequently listed as a parameter when it comes to minimum spec requirements in specialized apps, so it tends to be a bigger deal to me. I pay attention in the case of Apple, as they don't really do specialized hardware. Their line kind of is what it is, so if you use a Mac you have to look at what is available in terms of computers and added peripherals to come up with a complete solution.
Of course suppose it was introduced and you had the 13" base at $1,199, the upgraded 13" at $1,499, the base 15" at $1,799, the base discrete at $1,999, and the high end discrete at $2,199.
For the $2,199 model, whatever graphics card is put in, there needs to be an option for maxed out graphics memory or the graphics memory should be maxed out as standard be it 2 GB or 4 GB.
Well this I have to agree with, Apple is just plain stingy when it comes to memory of any type. The interesting thing here is that Haswell supposedly supports uniform access to system memory. If Apple can alter Mac OS to support this the days of worrying about system RAM dedicated to a GPU will be gone. Software often lags hardware with respect to capabilities like this so Haswell could become one of those bastards that are transitional. Frankly at this point we don't know how Apple will go about supporting GPUs as equals when it comes to memory management. Due to this lag the full capabilities of Haswell may never be realized in Mac OS.
Well this I have to agree with, Apple is just plain stingy when it comes to memory of any type. The interesting thing here is that Haswell supposedly supports uniform access to system memory. If Apple can alter Mac OS to support this the days of worrying about system RAM dedicated to a GPU will be gone. Software often lags hardware with respect to capabilities like this so Haswell could become one of those bastards that are transitional. Frankly at this point we don't know how Apple will go about supporting GPUs as equals when it comes to memory management. Due to this lag the full capabilities of Haswell may never be realized in Mac OS.
Well this I have to agree with, Apple is just plain stingy when it comes to memory of any type. The interesting thing here is that Haswell supposedly supports uniform access to system memory. If Apple can alter Mac OS to support this the days of worrying about system RAM dedicated to a GPU will be gone. Software often lags hardware with respect to capabilities like this so Haswell could become one of those bastards that are transitional. Frankly at this point we don't know how Apple will go about supporting GPUs as equals when it comes to memory management. Due to this lag the full capabilities of Haswell may never be realized in Mac OS.
They are claiming the 750M is 75% faster than the 650M too though. It's only clocked 15-30% faster and the same architecture.
They list the 650M as being 4.5x faster than the HD4000. So 6.5/4.5 means the 750M is only 44% faster than the 650M but they say 75%. They're just trying to use the best numbers in all cases.
You can see the benchmarks between the HD4000 and 650M:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000.69168.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html
In almost every test, the difference is closer to 3x faster. NVidia is using a single best case for marketing.
Assuming that the 650M is 3x faster than the HD4000 and Haswell is 2x faster, that means the 650M would remain 1.5x faster. That means Haswell would be closer to the 640M. What's funny is they list the 640M as 4x faster than the HD4000, which would make the 650M only 12% faster, which is true in some cases but not most cases. It's basically any numbers to make them look better than Intel.
Performance is going to vary between different tests but Haswell should at least bring the IGP to the 640M, which is a decent level of performance. If it goes in the entry 15" MBP so they can sell a rMBP at $1799, it might seem disappointing vs the 750M but not so much vs the 650M.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Assuming that the 650M is 3x faster than the HD4000 and Haswell is 2x faster, that means the 650M would remain 1.5x faster. That means Haswell would be closer to the 640M. What's funny is they list the 640M as 4x faster than the HD4000, which would make the 650M only 12% faster, which is true in some cases but not most cases. It's basically any numbers to make them look better than Intel.
Performance is going to vary between different tests but Haswell should at least bring the IGP to the 640M, which is a decent level of performance. If it goes in the entry 15" MBP so they can sell a rMBP at $1799, it might seem disappointing vs the 750M but not so much vs the 650M.
Drivers and supported functions are sometimes more important than raw performance numbers, but it depends on the targeted range for the machine. They have to determine who might buy it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
So have the classic 15" be integrated only? I wouldn't mind that with a price drop.
What do you mean by classic 15" ??? Do you mean non-Retina? It is possible that Apple might offer non-Retina MBPs with Haswell, but I would be surprised. I'm not even sure that Apple will offer non-Retina MBAs with Haswell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mcarling
I'm not even sure that Apple will offer non-Retina MBAs with Haswell.
The retina versions received minor revisions recently. The classic versions went untouched. The older style still exists as selling the rMBP at those price points would likely lead to either supply constraints or margins that are not in line with Apple's expectations. In either case these remain the entry level notebooks within Apple's lineup, in spite of being over $1000 regardless and closer to $1400 with a decent configuration. I suspect it will be another year before you see retina Airs, but I have been wrong before. I also thought an imac redesign would come this year after further studying of various screen treatments at the smaller sizes, but they have recently accelerated how quickly they propagate certain kinds of changes through the line.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmm
I suspect it will be another year before you see retina Airs, but I have been wrong before.
I would love to put a wager on that.
Interesting watching Dell's fall from greatness. Back in the day they used to at least offer ALL the latest and greatest hardware so the customer could max out performance, if so desired. Then they adopted the "its good enough for the masses" idiots philosophy which is stock in trade for bean counters, and since then, major decline. I think this is what Apple may be doing as they abandon their most loyal and biggest spending high end power users who want Mac pros and 17" Macbook Pros with lots of options. The reverse halo effect is never pretty.
Not quite. Dell went after high volume at the expense of profits and lowered quality. They only ship something like 3x Apple's volume but make 5% or less net margin vs Apple's 20-25%. Not only that, Apple's average selling price is significantly higher.
They also didn't have a plan B. They saturated their primary market by selling too much too soon and didn't bother thinking about what to do when that happened. They have no real place in the 'post-pc' market.
This is nothing like what Apple is doing at all. Dell also has a healthy workstation market so they didn't sacrifice it in favour of consumers:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/19/dell_q4_f2013_numbers/
"Dell doesn't report operating margins by product category, but if it did there seems little doubt that the enterprise system business is propping up the PC client business, much as was the case with IBM before it sold off its PC business to Lenovo."
In terms of loyalty, Mac Pro buyers think they are the most loyal and biggest spending customers, even when posting things like this:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/156913/my-new-mac-pro-a-2009-with-a-intel-xeon-westmere-3-33-6-cores
Buy used or hang onto an old Mac Pro, buy 3rd party components to spec it up and avoid paying for a new one. Guess how much Apple gets out of that. Doing everything possible to avoid paying Apple money is the polar opposite of loyalty.
Apple is currently providing for their most loyal customers - the iMac, Mini, MBA and Macbook Pro buyers, who upgrade regularly and pay for their BTO options. The 17" MBP most likely wasn't regularly upgraded due to the initial price. Apple could bring it back if there's a price gap when the rMBP price drops but 17" MBP buyers are no more important than 15" MBP buyers. There is an assumption that paying $2500 for a machine makes you a better customer than one paying $1800. It's not the case unless they have the same upgrade cycle, which is not likely, given that one of the primary reasons people give for paying more is 'it lasts longer'.
There's no sense in abandoning a high profit margin sector for the sake of it and Apple hasn't for now but it wouldn't affect the company in either the short or long term if they did. Apple is continuing to deliver quality products at a premium with high resolution, anti-glare, IPS displays with the highest-end desktop/laptop CPUs Intel offers with high performance features like Thunderbolt, fast GPUs and fast SSD drives.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
In terms of loyalty, Mac Pro buyers think they are the most loyal and biggest spending customers, even when posting things like this:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/156913/my-new-mac-pro-a-2009-with-a-intel-xeon-westmere-3-33-6-cores
Buy used or hang onto an old Mac Pro, buy 3rd party components to spec it up and avoid paying for a new one. Guess how much Apple gets out of that. Doing everything possible to avoid paying Apple money is the polar opposite of loyalty.
Apple is currently providing for their most loyal customers - the iMac, Mini, MBA and Macbook Pro buyers, who upgrade regularly and pay for their BTO options. The 17" MBP most likely wasn't regularly upgraded due to the initial price. Apple could bring it back if there's a price gap when the rMBP price drops but 17" MBP buyers are no more important than 15" MBP buyers. There is an assumption that paying $2500 for a machine makes you a better customer than one paying $1800. It's not the case unless they have the same upgrade cycle, which is not likely, given that one of the primary reasons people give for paying more is 'it lasts longer'.
You make way too many assertions from a couple forum posts. Beyond that you can't even make such an upgrade with a meaningful generation gap. Note how it's 4,1 -> 5,1. That's a 2009 vs 2010 configuration. The 2012 is just the same as the 2010 with a couple specs shuffled. The only part worth addressing is that growth in software demands hasn't been entirely consistent, so people may be holding onto these things for longer periods of time. The really interesting things to me are technologies like CUDA where basic workstations can leverage things that used to be the domain of smaller node based servers, but it's no different from anything that has happened before. Minicomputers could never handle mainframe loads. Desktop workstations could never replace dedicated hardware. I could probably think of more cliches, but they're all the same concept. Mac Pro like machines aren't exactly at the very top. They are a smaller market, but whoever owns these divisions, they will be around for some time. That doesn't mean Apple will maintain interest.
It always stays at a couple no matter how many examples come along. It must be at least a handful by now.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/360597-28-upgrade-macpro
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1505370
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=781908
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-MacPro-upgrade.html
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/step_by_step_mac_pro_processor_upgrade
http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/118042/Mac+Pro+1.1+Change+out+CPU
http://store.apple.com/uk/question/answers/mac/can-i-upgrade-the-cpu-on-mac-pro/Q2DCC7FHTU2UUT9X2
http://forum.netkas.org/index.php?topic=3829.0
http://www.staze.org/mac-pro-11-cpu-upgrade/
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/144215/upgrading-a-2006-macpro-2-66-ghz-machine
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3969568?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4894228?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4074230?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4685505?start=0&tstart=0
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1375414
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1540397
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1533098
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1419182
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/41988597
http://www.waitingoutside.com/2010/02/upgrading-a-2006-apple-mac-pro-11-with-2-xeon-x5355-processors/
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/668475-mac-pro-1-1-cpu-upgrade-advice.html
You know what the problem is. When you hold onto hardware for 6 years, the resale value is gone so it's a much better option to upgrade components than to buy new.
That doesn't explain the desire to upgrade.
It depends on what technology comes along:
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-qubit-bodes-future-quantum.html
The CUDA revolution started with just a single research project:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ian-buck-nvidia,2393.html
The smaller form factors will keep eroding away the large ones, especially the more that GPU computing takes hold:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphics/display/20130412175120_Nvidia_Next_Generation_Maxwell_Architecture_Will_Break_New_Grounds.html
Servers will always exist but they don't use the tower form factor.
Eventually, even big iron servers will be disposable non-serviceable units. I guess the next generation of the iMac and the Mac Mini will be completely sealed and just as upgradeable as an iPad. The Mac Pro will probably be the last Mac to not even have user installable memory, but it will eventually happen.
To those who say they will never buy one, fine, keep using 201x hardware until it dies -- even when eyeglasses have 100x more computing power than your Mac Pro.
Twisted logic on so many levels. Fact: I personally know many users in LA who work in pro audio waiting for another 17". Its not that anyone is "MORE IMPORTANT", lol. It's still an important and high spending sector who use these for a living, just like Mac pro users. You may be happy with what;s available NOW, I and many others are not.