UrbaneLegend

It took Apple six years but they pulled it off, they built a Mac Pro that'll sell even less well than the Trashcan.

Timmy didn't set the record straight though did he?

Timmy's knicker twisted response was rather short on detail.

Under Tim Cook Apple products have become as boring as one of his keynote addresses. Tim Cook is an enthusiasm vacuum, it's no wonder old one-trick decided to move on.

macplusplus said:

Yet that product could still sell if it was properly positioned and marketed. It was still a decent 4K video workstation.

No it wouldn't. The trashcan offered nothing that couldn't already be done with the then current Mac Pro. There was no position for it then and now.

Even if the Trashcan was slashed in price it would be useless for 4k Video as the vast majority of users shooting 4k video rely on h264 based codes which benefit hugely from Intel's Quicksync technology which is found on consumer i7/i9 CPUs and not on the Xeons. A cheap laptop would easily out-perform the Trashcan in 4k video editing. Apple has subsequently used the Vega GPUs to accelerate video codes in the iMac Pro but it's still not as fast as Quicksync.

The trashcan failed because it didn't offer a worthwhile performance improvement from the classic Mac Pro and the jobs artists wanted it for it sucked. There are countless stories of production studio literally burning through Trashcans because the GPUs cooked themselves to death. It was an appalling design and a disaster that went a long way in destroying the confidence of professionals in Apple Pro products. Apple's attempt to maximise profit by making the Trashcan as proprietary as possible and into an appliance failed miserably.

The latest Mac Pro makes similar mistakes of completely missing what the core Mac Pro buyer wants. There is a malaise in Apple's Mac design department.

Cook is a bean counter and that comes across in Apple's products and services offering which are about as interesting as one of his keynotes.

Cook is a less crude version of Ballmer instead of getting sweaty running around like an idiot shouting 'developers, developers, developers', Cook would meekly stand around saying, 'investors, investors, investors.'

It won't be until learn from Microsoft and point Cook at the exit and get a new CEO who thinks 'customers, customers, customers' that Apple will have a stab at the future. At the moment Cook is leading Apple down a cul-de-sac where their whole existence depends on a tiny portfolio of products which are not that special.

dewme said:

Agreed. Anyone who actually needs a Mac Pro as a business enabler and not simply because they lust after cool tech gadgets, is not complaining about the price. Businesses purchase tools and machinery to sustain their business and they pay for these as a cost of doing business. 

I take it you aren't exactly in business with a comment like that?

To suggest business customers aren't as price sensitive or don't want the best value for money they can get shows a complete lack of understanding of how business works. We are in competition if I spend 2-3 times more on a computer that does exactly the same as a much cheaper computer what does that do to either my profits or the rate I have to charge my customer?

Businesses want to keep their overheads as low as possible, I'd be happy to spend 2-3x more on a computer if it gave me some competitive advantage or it did a task 2-3x better but the Mac Pro is just a workstation that runs MacOS instead of Windows or Linux. There is no advantage for me in MacOS and if there was it wouldn't be worth spending 2-3x more on it. The reality is that PC Workstations are vastly cheaper, much easier to customise to best fit your business demands (e.g Intel or AMD CPUs and nVidia or AMD GPUs) and come with better warranties.

As others have noted the Warranty and service agreements that other Workstation vendors offer, Apple's lug it back to an Apple store for servicing when we get round to it is so far from the expectations of business customers it isn't funny.

I don't see what the Mac Pro brings to the table, it can't now even bring manufacturing jobs back to the US because the overt SJW CEO would rather off-shore US jobs to China. Where's the social justice in that decision?