Mark my words, if they dont put out a mac with slots, some storage bays, discrete video cards, upgradable ram, and expansion abilities (akin to Mac Pros prior to the trashcan), it will be game over for the professional market for apple.
I have heard this so many times in 25 years, yet here we are. This article isn't about Apple. This is about it's overly-devout, that say ridiculous things when they don't get what they want based on what they think Apple needs to do, or what they think that the engineers are going to crank out.
"Screw them, their thoughts/needs are irrelevant," indeed.
And, I never said that Apple knows best. What I said is that Apple will do what Apple will do.
Perhaps you never said it, but the article comes across as reluctantly understanding it. And this is not a time to be understanding about it. Because right now the design is in flux, and a big enough outcry can effect it in a positive way. And that you heard it so many times is great, it happens to be true. A HUGE number of professionals have left the mac platform, reluctantly. Check out mac rumors mac pro forums (here's another article with excerpts of mac pro users leaving: https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apples-failure-to-scale). Sure will apple be just fine. Yea probably for a very long time. Maybe forever.
But even currently, people are not product placing macs in ads/shows out of love like they used to. Apple has to pay for it more than before. Part of the disproportional effect of mac pros was this access to media placement. That gave apple billions of dollars of free and warm placement, it doesnt exists like it did before. The pro's SAVED apple, they were the hook that jobs dug into when he came back and saved it. When they leave, today, it may not matter, but it may. And to turn you shoulder on that group is a mistake.
Writing about how apple may not care in some sense gives them a pass, it normalizes that somehow there is reasonable justification for not tailoring to this group of users. We disagree on this approach. I would have preferred you to add to "apple probably will do this" and added "and when they do, they will make a mistake and alienate this important group of users even more". You stopped short of that, and it comes of as reluctant acceptance. When you, who are super insightful (genuinely mean that), and strong voice in the community accede to this end, it gives them leeway to go that way.
Target markets. Pros, even if they upgrade, don't pay the inflated price for upgrades at the time of purchase ($10k Mac pro? Really?). Businesses don't pay them either. Companies that typically have IT staff don't have a ton of Macs. And companies that do group animation and video use clusters of machines for processing. They're not doing it on their own individual machines. The workplace has changed. Creative jobs have been outsourced. Large departments of Macs with designers and artists at them have been replaced by freelancers who bring their own machines (or people who work offsite). It's less overhead for the company. Lower overhead, lower inventory, more profit = good business. This is the trend.
For Apple, while they rode on the backs of the creative industry for years, they made more money touting security and the failures of Windows (until they became a target themselves). This changed their target market, because as switchers jumped on board, they weren't willing to pay for upgrades. And if a system board failed, it was easier for Apple to swap single units than it was to replace components (lower qualifications for service techs). With more non-professional voices dictating the "Pro" line of machines, it killed much of that market for Apple. With the ubiquity of the word, now companies make "Pro" doorbells. So it's lost its meaning.
There are still a few of us who would love to have a brand new loaded Mac, but they're not going to make millions of dollars off of us though. I personally wish they would open-source their OS. Then I could run what I wanted as a professional. Start charging for the OS again and make it cross-platform capable. Let companies write drivers. At the very least, split software from hardware in regard to the OS and make a different company that sells the OS for desktops. Apple can keep their Frankensteined mobile OS though. Time for competition.
This. However, Apple being the control freak king of all control freaks - will never open-source the OS. They would rather it die completely and go into bankruptcy than that.
The problem for Apple is - if they lose the creatives, they lose it all. If the freelancers all switch to Windoze, then more software will be developed for Windoze and cascade into mobile and Android. More creative tools for those platforms means the business community shifting with the 'creatives'.
Keynote was probably the single largest factor in Apple's laptop success. Guarantee it.
That is some elitist stuff here. I don't even think you know what the word "Pro" means but you would had you actually read the article.
"Workflow teams from 'StarWars' were the same narrow group that liked the trashcan." and "Apple didn't listen on the Mac Pro once already " are mutually exclusive. 1 of those can be true but not both. Simple logic 101.
"The Pros know better and it doesnt matter what the 'wider'"???? "The Pros know better"??? You have already demonstrated you don't know what a "Pro" user is. How can they "know better" when you can't even define the group you are talking about?
"Also, the premise that many people never upgrade their mac pro is a faulty one for the pro market." Again, you have reading issues since the author neither wrote that nor implied that.
Wow... Just wow...
That said, you have made it very clear what you are after from YOUR stand point but don't assume every single "Pro" user has the same exact criteria as you or your criteria are even a majority of views for the target audience.
Not sure if you misread or have a poor grasp of logic. Apple first didnt listen and produced the trashcan mac. THEN, a bunch of apologist 'pixar/star wars' users apologized endlessly how much they like the trashcan and endlessly would yell at other pro users that they knew best...only to have apple embarrassingly admit the design was a failure.
I have a feeling that Apple will make this forthcoming model so modular and customizable that it would cover the entire range from Mac mini all the way to Mac Pro, effectively replacing both models with one, highly customizable model. As such the next Mac Pro may not be called “Pro”. Base model would start at Mac mini price point, with endless configurations that reach into iMac/Mac Pro territory.
I do not care for the name, but I really rely on a capable, upgradable machine. With hindsight the purchase of my Mac Pro 2010 8 core has been one of the best purchases I have made, the best Mac I have purchased yet. I upgraded everything from CPU, RAM, HDDs, Bluetooth, WIFI, .... The machine is now 8 years old and as solid as when I bought it (2 x 6 x 3.46 GHz, 64 GB RAM, 30 TB HDD ...). As an architect and engineer I can do everything with it from 3D Cad, BIM, modeling, rendering, FEM calculations, GIS modeling, video rendering, ableton, it is a solid development machine, graphic, layout, ... The MacBook Pros I had and currently have just cannot dissipate heat well enough, after some years glue dissolves, circuits break, etc. Sorry but Mac Mini, iMacs even MacBook Pros just do not cut it in my case. To be able to upgrade CPU, GPU & RAM is essential for me. Of cause could I buy a new computer every 3 to 4 years, but what waste of resources would that be? How much waste are we going to produce? My Mac Pro survived three MacBook Pros and I am more than careful with the MBPs!!! Currently I have a maxed out 2016 MBP and I never ever had a machine I had more problems with. I mean I love the machine, I love USB C and everything, but the machine has been 3 months in AppleCare already, they exchanged motherboards twice, exchanged the display, keyboard, touchbar ... and I touch it with GLOVES!!!! A machine that fragile does not qualify as Pro! And it cost me € 5000,-! That is as much as I have paid for my maxed out Mac Pro and I think that looking at my 2016 MBP, my Mac Pro might well survive even another MacBook Pro! How sad is that!
To say it with other words: my Mac Pro experience asks for another Mac Pro experience, my last MacBook Pros 2011, 2013 (both multiple GPU problems), as well as my current 2016 MBP really let me doubt about the hardware!!!
iMacs aren't that much more expensive than Mac minis and offer significantly better specs and a display far superior than the one you probably have lying around. I think that's why the Mac mini is moribund. So I think the missing mid-range Mac is the iMac and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I am on my second 27" iMac and would have bought an iMac Pro but for some major life changes that required that I go portable. (I am typing this on my brand new 15" MacBook Pro in Costa Rica; my relocation there required portability.)
I have personally upgraded both my 27" iMacs to max out their RAM. I was miffed that the process for iMac Pro is difficult since it would allow me to purchase RAM as I need it instead of buying all the RAM the system needed upon purchase. I really would love 128GB RAM but it's just too expensive .
There are obviously two kinds of people: Those who love to open up their machines to replace components and those who don't. People who work at Pixar or ILM are pretty expensive skilled workers who would be wasting their time opening their machines to save a few hundred bucks. Have you noticed the budgets on those movies lately? The cost of memory over there is a triviality. The pro users who get value out of opening up their machines are people in smaller shops who have to save money to survive. There's nothing wrong with either group but to call Pixar users anything other than pro users is downright absurd.
Yeah, okay, where’s the automatic draft save feature on the forum? Huddled had it; I guess Quiller doesn’t. Because iOS 11.4’s Safari crashes all the fucking time and there’s no joy in posting if I have to rewrite everything when the goddamn thing has to reload ALL my tabs whenever ONE of them crashes.
A bit less than three in a hundred users even installed RAM on their own, and on top of that, about six in a hundred users paid somebody else to do it. So, rounding up, one in 10 users of the total user base between 1998 and 2010 did their own upgrades. It doesn't get easier to upgrade than this, and most still didn't do it.
...a ton of the new iMac Pro that will ultimately be disposed of in the same configuration they bought them in.
Instead of forging ahead with the “Apple will do whatever it wants, suck it up, ha ha democracy is good” mindset, shouldn’t we be talking about how this corporate behavior is at odds with Apple’s claimed other ideological beliefs? The point of upgrades is so that you don’t have to buy new computers as often. Treating them like black box disposables only adds to waste. Yes, Apple expects you to recycle everything, but Apple also thinks that everyone lives in Southern California and makes $250,000 a year, minimum, to just afford all their new products every time one is released. Apple completely shutting off all upgrades in all its products is a reaction to people generally not doing the upgrades, yes. You’re right about that. BUT WHY WOULD THEY NOT WANT PEOPLE TO UPGRADE to save on the waste?
“Because they’re a company first and they want money.”
That’s really the only explanation I have, too. This mindset is originally borne of Steve’s desire not to have people futzing with “his product”, sure. But Steve’s dead. And he obviously was very flexible with that idea through most products over the years. With Apple’s newest push into environmentalism, why not make it part of Apple’s culture to ENCOURAGE upgrades? Make it be a “We’ll do it for you” service, done at Apple Stores, and then people won’t be afraid of breaking something (and also won’t BE breaking anything, leading to bogging down of their repair system).
Apple made a mistake with the "Pro" naming scheme, which feeds into the toxic elitism surrounding this.
I hate this word so much. Its use speaks to ideological brainwashing.
I work for the IATSE Stagehands Union. I work lots of concerts and see all kinds of high end video, audio, and pyrotechnic gear on a fairly regular basis. I see lots of cheese grater Mac Pros in rack boxes, and I see lots of MacBook Pro laptops, but I have yet to see a cylinder Mac Pro on a tour. That doesn’t mean they are not being used, but to me says that the tour guys and girls are hanging on to the older Pros, and I have no doubt they are upgraded as far as possible.
Updated my white MacBook memory and hard disk, updated my Mac mini memory and hard disk (putty knife style) and fixed a rusty dvd drive connector, updated my iMac with 12GB of memory, later on to 16GB and replaced the hard disk with 1TB ssd (removed the screen and lcd panel to be able to do that), updated memory and ssd’s of several Mac mini’s at work. In short: I updated every Mac I worked on.
Upgrades make it possible to keep your computer speedy and up to date for a reasonable price and a prolonged time. It makes the hardware more affordable and that is important for almost every computer user.
I think AI should have quoted this from the TechCrunch article:
Throughout, the idea of modularity was omnipresent. An iMac Pro with two iPad Pros hooked up to it allows for direct control, shortcuts and live access to the Logic manual, all while you’re mixing a song on the main device: an eGPU with a MacBook Pro running a live edit of an 8K stream with color grading and effects applied.
External GPUs plugged into MacBook Pros, in my opinion, is going to be an enormous shift in the way that people think about portables. I got a live demo of a graphics stress test running on a MacBook Pro natively, then on one and then two external GPUs. The switching is nearly seamless, depending on the age of the app, and some modern rendering software can use all three in concert. It’s one of those things that works exactly the way you think it would, and it leans heavily on Thunderbolt 3.
The above is a pretty huge clue on what modular means to Apple, imo. They want to extend functionality through external boxes connected together by high bandwidth cables and wireless input devices. When they say modular, they are thinking of it from the perspective of an iMac, MBP, iPhone, iPad, ie, all in one machines, and something that is modular has separate displays, separate input devices, separate storage boxes, separate compute boxes. This was the idea of the 2013 Mac Pro, when they called it the most expandable Mac ever.
Ok, it’s a vision. Heck, I think they should have a 0.5” thick iMac where if you have 2 of them, they can be connected and act like an 8 to 12 core heterogenous compute system.
The 2013 Mac Pro was fine too, and I like the design. But where was the commitment? They should have kept it updated. No Apple monitor was a big mistake, especially considering the customer base buying 20 million Macs per year. Why no Apple storage solutions? What will be different about how Apple will treat this new Mac versus how Apple treated the 2013 Mac Pro? Are they going to have service solutions to upgrade the machines? What are they going to do if say there is a 300 W GPU solution that isn’t a drop in replacement for the Mac Pro?
Apple should make this an insanely powerful even if it means 18 core CPU and 128 GB RAM starting at $ 10,000 for the base model.
unfortunately this won't arrive till 2020.
I will never be in the market for something so powerful and expensive. Yet I passionately believe that there should be a powerful, flexible and versatile Mac Pro as a hero project. The most powerful computer you can buy off the shelf. The marketing benefits alone would be fantastic.
Not because I want some bragging rights for my chosen platform (well not just that), but because what it would say about Apple and its intentions regarding personal computing. Like Honda and it’s spending in F1, the technologies and skills developed eventually flow ‘down’ to prosumer and consumer markets. Imagine the heat performance improvement if the next gen standard iMacs adopt the internal heat management design of the iMac pro.
I too do not believe Apple has an endlessly expandable cheese grater, like many tinkering hobbyists passionately want, in mind. Where the article gets it wrong is that pro users on this forum are not corporate workers who work on never to be upgraded machines, but small business operators. Upgradability of ram and hard drives becomes important to them, as they can’t afford Apple’s unreasonable upgrade prices.
But a hero project that changes how people think about high end computing, that would be very interesting.
Of course, what would be truly awesome would be three options: the iMac Pro; a cheese grater; and a hero project paradigm shifter.
At least 50% of pro users don't really need a super powerful machine. Of the others, 80% can be happy with an iMac Pro. Of the others – around 10% of pros – they need a machine that is fast, with tons of RAM, and can be expanded up the wazoo. If Apple were to build such a machine, 25% - 30% of pro Mac users would go for it – some for what it is and the rest simply because it is top of the line.
Being a creative pro for 25 years, I am tired of Apple tossing iron at me that is essentially prosumer gear. In terms of expandability – without covering the desktop in peripherals – Apple hasn't come out with a new format since the PowerMac G5 in 2004 – twelve freaking years ago.
When the cylinder came out I expected this to be followed by a matching expansion chassis that would mate precisely with the back of the cylinder. That was five years ago. It never happened. If they are talking about a modular system, this approach would do it. The only thing to hit the market that would fit into this concept was the rack chassis from Sonnet. Apple could have done it better.
In the meantime, I will continue to wait for Apple to recognize that top level pros need Macs, too.
"Apple made a mistake with the "Pro" naming scheme, which feeds into the toxic elitism surrounding this."
What? That's a completely bizarre statement considering the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro have been identified as such for a long time.
This thread, as well as countless others, clearly show the entitlenment some people have over what they believe Apple owes them for being “longtime power users.”
That said, I don’t think anything would change with these people if Apple changed the nomenclature.
The word "Pro" is getting both stale and divisive. Can we find a new product name for this line? How about the "Mac Mod" where Mod officially means "modular"? Apple keeps saying "modular" so why not? And Mod also rhymes with Pod. Mod also means "stylish," "fashionable," "Modern," "chic," and "up-to-date." Mod is also a specific fashion style from the 1960s meaning a black trench coat and sunglasses. For a while the Beatles were dressed in mod. I would say that Neo in the Matrix was very mod. I would suggest Apple hire Keanu Reeves and dress him in mod style to sell the first Mac Mod. The Mac Mod would likely come in black, with a hint of green. "Sunglasses not included."
If Apple uses this name idea I think they owe me about $50k.
I would buy a Dell and gut it (when appropriate)... new Ram, SD drive, video cards. Every 2 years brings such a huge boost of performance...
Of course, upgrading laptops is limited to Ram + SD. But upgrades are so easy in the PC world, if I move to a Mac I’d expect the same.
I’d purchase an A series Apple laptop expecting limited upgrades, but for Pro level devices that’s unacceptable.
The studios that purchase Mac Pro's don't have time nor do they care to tear a computer apart every 2yrs to upgrade it. Thats just nonsense and massive amounts of downtime which costs them far more than just buying a Mac, using it until it doesn't suit their needs anymore and then get a new one. I don't know if you understand the type of customers who buy these things. Its not Joe Schmo with a tower playing PUBG or something and then buying a video card in 2yrs when a better one comes out.
I see a lot of listings of refurbished Mac units on eBay. I notice the refurb companies are located in the L.A. area, N.Y. area, and other places that have studios around them. I notice the majority of refurbs are stock Macs.
I think AI should have quoted this from the TechCrunch article:
Throughout, the idea of modularity was omnipresent. An iMac Pro with two iPad Pros hooked up to it allows for direct control, shortcuts and live access to the Logic manual, all while you’re mixing a song on the main device: an eGPU with a MacBook Pro running a live edit of an 8K stream with color grading and effects applied.
External GPUs plugged into MacBook Pros, in my opinion, is going to be an enormous shift in the way that people think about portables. I got a live demo of a graphics stress test running on a MacBook Pro natively, then on one and then two external GPUs. The switching is nearly seamless, depending on the age of the app, and some modern rendering software can use all three in concert. It’s one of those things that works exactly the way you think it would, and it leans heavily on Thunderbolt 3.
The above is a pretty huge clue on what modular means to Apple, imo. They want to extend functionality through external boxes connected together by high bandwidth cables and wireless input devices. When they say modular, they are thinking of it from the perspective of an iMac, MBP, iPhone, iPad, ie, all in one machines, and something that is modular has separate displays, separate input devices, separate storage boxes, separate compute boxes. This was the idea of the 2013 Mac Pro, when they called it the most expandable Mac ever.
Ok, it’s a vision. Heck, I think they should have a 0.5” thick iMac where if you have 2 of them, they can be connected and act like an 8 to 12 core heterogenous compute system.
The 2013 Mac Pro was fine too, and I like the design. But where was the commitment? They should have kept it updated. No Apple monitor was a big mistake, especially considering the customer base buying 20 million Macs per year. Why no Apple storage solutions? What will be different about how Apple will treat this new Mac versus how Apple treated the 2013 Mac Pro? Are they going to have service solutions to upgrade the machines? What are they going to do if say there is a 300 W GPU solution that isn’t a drop in replacement for the Mac Pro?
I think you have put the finger on what Apple has in mind when it says ‘modularity’. A really expensive way to upgrade. Not to say it wouldn’t be convienient, but an inherently costly approach, both in cost and environmental terms. I actually thought that is what Apple had in mind with the 2013 Mac Pro, but as you say, there was no follow through. It was as not developed further. Abandoned. Like so many possibly good innovations: no follow through. Look at the iPad pro’s smart connector, another example of lack of follow through.
Comments
Perhaps you never said it, but the article comes across as reluctantly understanding it. And this is not a time to be understanding about it. Because right now the design is in flux, and a big enough outcry can effect it in a positive way. And that you heard it so many times is great, it happens to be true. A HUGE number of professionals have left the mac platform, reluctantly. Check out mac rumors mac pro forums (here's another article with excerpts of mac pro users leaving: https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apples-failure-to-scale). Sure will apple be just fine. Yea probably for a very long time. Maybe forever.
But even currently, people are not product placing macs in ads/shows out of love like they used to. Apple has to pay for it more than before. Part of the disproportional effect of mac pros was this access to media placement. That gave apple billions of dollars of free and warm placement, it doesnt exists like it did before. The pro's SAVED apple, they were the hook that jobs dug into when he came back and saved it. When they leave, today, it may not matter, but it may. And to turn you shoulder on that group is a mistake.
Writing about how apple may not care in some sense gives them a pass, it normalizes that somehow there is reasonable justification for not tailoring to this group of users. We disagree on this approach. I would have preferred you to add to "apple probably will do this" and added "and when they do, they will make a mistake and alienate this important group of users even more". You stopped short of that, and it comes of as reluctant acceptance. When you, who are super insightful (genuinely mean that), and strong voice in the community accede to this end, it gives them leeway to go that way.
However, Apple being the control freak king of all control freaks - will never open-source the OS. They would rather it die completely and go into bankruptcy than that.
The problem for Apple is - if they lose the creatives, they lose it all.
If the freelancers all switch to Windoze, then more software will be developed for Windoze and cascade into mobile and Android.
More creative tools for those platforms means the business community shifting with the 'creatives'.
Keynote was probably the single largest factor in Apple's laptop success. Guarantee it.
Not sure if you misread or have a poor grasp of logic. Apple first didnt listen and produced the trashcan mac. THEN, a bunch of apologist 'pixar/star wars' users apologized endlessly how much they like the trashcan and endlessly would yell at other pro users that they knew best...only to have apple embarrassingly admit the design was a failure.
That would be something.
To say it with other words: my Mac Pro experience asks for another Mac Pro experience, my last MacBook Pros 2011, 2013 (both multiple GPU problems), as well as my current 2016 MBP really let me doubt about the hardware!!!
I have personally upgraded both my 27" iMacs to max out their RAM. I was miffed that the process for iMac Pro is difficult since it would allow me to purchase RAM as I need it instead of buying all the RAM the system needed upon purchase. I really would love 128GB RAM but it's just too expensive
There are obviously two kinds of people: Those who love to open up their machines to replace components and those who don't. People who work at Pixar or ILM are pretty expensive skilled workers who would be wasting their time opening their machines to save a few hundred bucks. Have you noticed the budgets on those movies lately? The cost of memory over there is a triviality. The pro users who get value out of opening up their machines are people in smaller shops who have to save money to survive. There's nothing wrong with either group but to call Pixar users anything other than pro users is downright absurd.
Instead of forging ahead with the “Apple will do whatever it wants, suck it up, ha ha democracy is good” mindset, shouldn’t we be talking about how this corporate behavior is at odds with Apple’s claimed other ideological beliefs? The point of upgrades is so that you don’t have to buy new computers as often. Treating them like black box disposables only adds to waste. Yes, Apple expects you to recycle everything, but Apple also thinks that everyone lives in Southern California and makes $250,000 a year, minimum, to just afford all their new products every time one is released. Apple completely shutting off all upgrades in all its products is a reaction to people generally not doing the upgrades, yes. You’re right about that. BUT WHY WOULD THEY NOT WANT PEOPLE TO UPGRADE to save on the waste?
“Because they’re a company first and they want money.”
That’s really the only explanation I have, too. This mindset is originally borne of Steve’s desire not to have people futzing with “his product”, sure. But Steve’s dead. And he obviously was very flexible with that idea through most products over the years. With Apple’s newest push into environmentalism, why not make it part of Apple’s culture to ENCOURAGE upgrades? Make it be a “We’ll do it for you” service, done at Apple Stores, and then people won’t be afraid of breaking something (and also won’t BE breaking anything, leading to bogging down of their repair system).
I hate this word so much. Its use speaks to ideological brainwashing.
In short: I updated every Mac I worked on.
Upgrades make it possible to keep your computer speedy and up to date for a reasonable price and a prolonged time. It makes the hardware more affordable and that is important for almost every computer user.
What? That's a completely bizarre statement considering the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro have been identified as such for a long time.
I think AI should have quoted this from the TechCrunch article:
The above is a pretty huge clue on what modular means to Apple, imo. They want to extend functionality through external boxes connected together by high bandwidth cables and wireless input devices. When they say modular, they are thinking of it from the perspective of an iMac, MBP, iPhone, iPad, ie, all in one machines, and something that is modular has separate displays, separate input devices, separate storage boxes, separate compute boxes. This was the idea of the 2013 Mac Pro, when they called it the most expandable Mac ever.
Ok, it’s a vision. Heck, I think they should have a 0.5” thick iMac where if you have 2 of them, they can be connected and act like an 8 to 12 core heterogenous compute system.
The 2013 Mac Pro was fine too, and I like the design. But where was the commitment? They should have kept it updated. No Apple monitor was a big mistake, especially considering the customer base buying 20 million Macs per year. Why no Apple storage solutions? What will be different about how Apple will treat this new Mac versus how Apple treated the 2013 Mac Pro? Are they going to have service solutions to upgrade the machines? What are they going to do if say there is a 300 W GPU solution that isn’t a drop in replacement for the Mac Pro?
Not because I want some bragging rights for my chosen platform (well not just that), but because what it would say about Apple and its intentions regarding personal computing. Like Honda and it’s spending in F1, the technologies and skills developed eventually flow ‘down’ to prosumer and consumer markets. Imagine the heat performance improvement if the next gen standard iMacs adopt the internal heat management design of the iMac pro.
I too do not believe Apple has an endlessly expandable cheese grater, like many tinkering hobbyists passionately want, in mind. Where the article gets it wrong is that pro users on this forum are not corporate workers who work on never to be upgraded machines, but small business operators. Upgradability of ram and hard drives becomes important to them, as they can’t afford Apple’s unreasonable upgrade prices.
But a hero project that changes how people think about high end computing, that would be very interesting.
Of course, what would be truly awesome would be three options: the iMac Pro; a cheese grater; and a hero project paradigm shifter.
Being a creative pro for 25 years, I am tired of Apple tossing iron at me that is essentially prosumer gear. In terms of expandability – without covering the desktop in peripherals – Apple hasn't come out with a new format since the PowerMac G5 in 2004 – twelve freaking years ago.
When the cylinder came out I expected this to be followed by a matching expansion chassis that would mate precisely with the back of the cylinder. That was five years ago. It never happened. If they are talking about a modular system, this approach would do it. The only thing to hit the market that would fit into this concept was the rack chassis from Sonnet. Apple could have done it better.
In the meantime, I will continue to wait for Apple to recognize that top level pros need Macs, too.
That said, I don’t think anything would change with these people if Apple changed the nomenclature.
ready go
If Apple uses this name idea I think they owe me about $50k.