Appletron

bigcountry said:

I think there are a number of factors here that explain the lack of action on the Mac Pro:

1. It's perhaps Apple's smallest slice of the pie... it's almost a rounding error in their financials. So it's not a high fiscal priority.

And that there is exactly the problem with Apple today. 
They stopped innovating and designing great computers to make customer's lives better first - and instead innovate and design with the first priority being on financials. Needlessly locking down their products with firmware, glue, solder and proprietary screws. 
Without the handheld side feeding the company - the Mac side of the business would not even exist.

So 'rounding error' sales of their flagship computer can easily be viewed as a failure. 

I personally don't have high hopes for the Mac Pro. There will be some completely ridiculous catch that alienates 99% of the professional market. That's pretty much a guarantee at this point. It won't change until Tim is gone. Similar to how the dongle disaster didn't end until Ives left. 

It's been 10 years since Apple had a true Mac Pro tower. Where users could upgrade and customize ram, video cards, HDD's, PCI cards, and even chipsets. Those were Apple's highest selling Mac's. The flood of 'Professionals' out of the Mac environment since has been constant. I don't know any studio's who still use Mac's for production - except ours and a few youtube'ers only doing it for reviews - and we are most likely going to jump out after 28 years ourselves. 

The typical response to 'most users never upgraded that stuff' is laughably not true - most if not all did. However, the statement may ring true today, as most of the users who would have upgraded their computers, jumped ship log ago. 

A few weeks from now - Apple will introduce their 'brain-module' plug and play Mac Pro... which will essentially be the same as how components work on the PC side now - except those 'modules' will be proprietary and absurdly expensive. Book it.