2016 nMP

[fuchsdh]

2001 . The GeForce3 came to the Mac first . It was used for gaming .
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That might have been a relic of Steve Jobs' aborted attempt to present the Mac as good for gaming (along with that awesome Bungie game for Mac, Halo...)

Gaming was and is a lost cause for Apple to focus on. Even if Apple suddenly turned around and sold or supported high-end GPUs, worked on the driver situation, kept OpenGL up-to-date... those PC gamers with their rig-as-lightsaber philosophy were and never are going to switch to a Mac.

Gaming on Mac could certainly be *better* if someone at Apple knew or really cared about games (which has never been the case as far as I can tell, during Jobs' time or after) but realistically it's plateaued. As someone who lived through the dearth of gamings in the 90s and 2000s, we're still way better off now as opposed to then (we get reasonably priced ports a few months after the games release instead of years, tons of indie games come via SteamPlay, etc.)

 

[zephonic]

I don't know, Hank. Seems to me you are the one going ad hominem here.

 

[wallysb01]

. . .the workstation market fell only 0.8% in the fourth quarter of 2015 (year over year), and about the same for 2015 overall. . .

We're celebrating smaller YOY declines as victories?

0.8% is basically nothing. Its a rounding error. Looking at the long term trend (you can go back search through old releases on JPR) and the workstation market has basically been fluctuating around 0% for years now.

Here, I'll do a little yearly search for you:

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...arket-chugs-along-in-q414-jon-peddie-research

"Worldwide, the industry shipped approximately 1.03 million workstations in Q4'14, equating to a within-cyclical-norms 1.4% sequential growth."

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...eeling-the-same-pain-as-the-broader-pc-market

"he leading workstation and professional graphics analyst firm reported that the industry shipped approximately 890.5 thousand workstations worldwide, a figure 4.7% lower than the fourth quarter of 2012 and 3.0% lower than the same quarter a year prior. The disappointment is obvious, as no business is happy with a market showing no growth."

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/steady-as-she-goes-for-the-workstation-market-in-q411

"All told, around 998.9 thousand workstations shipped worldwide, representing a healthy - but by no means torrid - 10.5% year-over-year gain."

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...rkstation-market-continues-to-experience-heal

"Completing analysis of the workstation and professional graphics market for the fourth quarter, Jon Peddie Research senior analyst Alex Herrera reports the industry shipped 903.7 thousand workstations, representing a solid-though-moderate 6.4% sequential gain."




Anyway, look at those figures. q4'10 - 903K shipments, q4'11 - 999K, q4'12 - 890K, q4'14 - 1.03M, q4'15 - 1.04M.

Seems like relatively stable, slow growth to me...
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I don't know, Hank. Seems to me you are the one going ad hominem here.

Seems to me dpny's post #800 was the first to go ad hominem in this little subthread actually:

Ah, yes: never mind the numbers. I have my anecdotes! String enough of them together and it's a data point.

That, sir, is an appeal to ridicule.

 

[dpny]

Anyway, look at those figures. q4'10 - 903K shipments, q4'11 - 999K, q4'12 - 890K, q4'14 - 1.03M, q4'15 - 1.04M.

Seems like relatively stable, slow growth to me...

Or, to use your term, a rounding error.

And the larger point seems to have been lost: at best, a million per quarter, globally. Pretty much the definition of a niche market. Apple never intended to sell a lot of nMPs, because no one is selling a lot of workstations any more.

 

[zephonic]

Seems to me dpny's post #800 was the first to go ad hominem in this little subthread actually:

That, sir, is an appeal to ridicule.

Ridicule does not equal ad hominem.

ad hominem |ˈad ˈhämənəm|
adverb& adjective
1 (of an argument or reaction) arising from or appealing to the emotions and not reason or logic.
• attacking an opponent's motives or character rather than the policy or position they maintain: vicious ad hominem attacks.
2 relating to or associated with a particular person: [ as adv. ] : the office was created ad hominem for Fenton | [ as adj. ] : an ad hominem response.
ORIGIN late 16th cent.: Latin, literally ‘to the person.’

[bold added]

dpny ridiculed Hank's notion that what he observes around him trumps facts and figures. That is attacking a position, not the person. Whether or not you agree with him, dpny has put forth a solid argument, and Hank's last reply is where it descends into ad hominem.


Anyway, we're veering off-topic here. My apologies, I'll stop this now.

 

[dpny]

And, by the way, apologies to Hank if I offended him. It was not my intention.

 

[goMac]

Or, to use your term, a rounding error.

And the larger point seems to have been lost: at best, a million per quarter, globally. Pretty much the definition of a niche market. Apple never intended to sell a lot of nMPs, because no one is selling a lot of workstations any more.

Apple is totally fine with niche markets, as long as they make a profit. The iPad Pro is going to be a niche tablet, yet they sell it any way. Same is true of the Mac Mini. The Apple Watch is also very likely a niche product.

I think Apple knew what they were getting into with the nMP. If you look at the numbers, they probably weren't selling a huge number of tower Mac Pros either, but they still put the effort in for the nMP. In 2011 the market was still a million machines a quarter globally too. It's not like that changed.

 

[wallysb01]

Ridicule does not equal ad hominem.

ad hominem |ˈad ˈhämənəm|
adverb& adjective
1 (of an argument or reaction) arising from or appealing to the emotions and not reason or logic.
• attacking an opponent's motives or character rather than the policy or position they maintain: vicious ad hominem attacks.
2 relating to or associated with a particular person: [ as adv. ] : the office was created ad hominem for Fenton | [ as adj. ] : an ad hominem response.
ORIGIN late 16th cent.: Latin, literally ‘to the person.’

[bold added]

dpny ridiculed Hank's notion that what he observes around him trumps facts and figures. That is attacking a position, not the person. Whether or not you agree with him, dpny has put forth a solid argument, and Hank's last reply is where it descends into ad hominem.

Anyway, we're veering off-topic here. My apologies, I'll stop this now.

I'm not sure it would be proper to classify this as just an appeal to ridicule however. Dpny mocks Hank himself when he pretends to speak for him ( the whole "I have my anecdotes" thing). By bringing up the person and not just the argument, there is clearly a certain amount of ridicule going to both the author of the argument and the argument itself.

Or, to use your term, a rounding error.

And the larger point seems to have been lost: at best, a million per quarter, globally. Pretty much the definition of a niche market. Apple never intended to sell a lot of nMPs, because no one is selling a lot of workstations any more.

A million per quarter isn't enough? Apple sells, what, 5M macs of all kinds per quarter? And what's the average price of a workstation vs PC? 10x? This is not a trivial market. Its tens of billions a year. Just because something doesn't make as much regular PCs or smart phones, doesn't make something niche.

 

[dpny]

Its tens of billions a year.

According to one of the links you posted earlier, HP leads the world in workstation sales. In 2014 HP's net income was US$ 5 billion. Unless you are claiming that all of HP's income comes from workstations sales, I think you're off by one or two orders of magnitude.
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Apple is totally fine with niche markets, as long as they make a profit.

I disagree. I think Apple is okay with niche markets so long as they see them as growth markets.

 

[wallysb01]

According to one of the links you posted earlier, HP leads the world in workstation sales. In 2014 HP's net income was US$ 5 billion. Unless you are claiming that all of HP's income comes from workstations sales, I think you're off by one or two orders of magnitude.

1M sales per quarter *$1000 per workstation is $1B in sales per quarter. If the average sale price per workstation is something like $2000 (which would seem very low, but probably has a lot to do with how you break out sales made with the computer and separate purchases to be added by the end users), you get an $8B per year market. That seems like an absolute floor, since its pretty hard to buy a workstation for less than $2K, while its really easy to buy one that's more like $5-10K. There is no way I am off by even a single order of magnitude, a factor of 2? Maybe.

I disagree. I think Apple is okay with niche markets so long as they see them as growth markets.

Why in the world are they selling PCs then? Apple might buck the overall trend for a little while, but sooner or later the broader market forces will catch up with them. There are only so many sales they can continue to steal from HP/Dell/etc in a shrinking market.

 

[p.l]

So much bickering in this thread .....

http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/09/o...-the-best-graphics-software-across-platforms/

Pretty interesting news.

That article is a good read... Good on Otoy for decompiling the code and making it work on any and every available piece of kit. I love Cuda cause its fast but we really have no competition so looking forward to this and hopefully pushes both sides to really compete for Compute.

This would change everything i guess.

Ps. Don't care about gaming like the majority of people here.
I game but like most here with a mac I'm not fazed on 144z 4k blah blah.
All i care about is compute power.

 

[edanuff]

Or, to use your term, a rounding error.

And the larger point seems to have been lost: at best, a million per quarter, globally. Pretty much the definition of a niche market. Apple never intended to sell a lot of nMPs, because no one is selling a lot of workstations any more.

It gets even worse when one considers that Apple's share of workstation sales (even in the so-called cMP heyday) were generally too small a % to break out from "other". Two years ago the estimate was that a little over 1M MacPro's had been shipped since introduction. There were a few anecdotes in 2014 that they'd sold much more nMPs than expected, but no matter how you slice it, it's always been very low run rate product line.

 

[dpny]

1M sales per quarter *$1000 per workstation is $1B in sales per quarter. If the average sale price per workstation is something like $2000 (which would seem very low, but probably has a lot to do with how you break out sales made with the computer and separate purchases to be added by the end users), you get an $8B per year market. That seems like an absolute floor, since its pretty hard to buy a workstation for less than $2K, while its really easy to buy one that's more like $5-10K. There is no way I am off by even a single order of magnitude, a factor of 2? Maybe.

You are talking revenue. I'm talking profit.

Beyond this, all the numbers you can think of don't mean a thing when you look at HP's annual report, given their close to 50% market share in global workstation sales. The Printing and Personal Systems Group includes "commercial PCs, consumer PCs, workstations, thin client PCs, tablets, retail point-of-sale (‘‘POS’’) systems, calculators and other related accessories, software, support and services for the commercial and consumer markets" and "commercial printer hardware, supplies, media, software and services, as well as scanning devices." All of that stuff together made about US$ 1.3 billion in fiscal 2014. Even if you assume that the only thing which turned a profit for HP in those groupings were workstations sales, you're still several billion off of your floor. Dell, number two in workstation sales, looks like it made a tick over US$ 1.3 billion in the last four quarters from all it divisions combined.

So, for the sake of your argument, where are all your billions of workstation dollars going? Or, perhaps, the simple answer the right one: it's a small market with very narrow margins, and there isn't a company out there which makes a lot of money selling workstations.

Seriously, if you can find an annual report showing me a company making lots of money selling workstations, please post it.

 

[Machines]

Perhaps we should consider the worldwide sales of servers in our discussion . Some of these units might actually be used as workstations instead . I tried to discover the sales figure, but the best I could find were quarterly sales from more than one source . Server market is bigger than the workstation market .

 

[Zarniwoop]

Polaris 10 an 11 are rumored to come out in June 2016. I believe that Macbook Pro and MP both will be updated then. Polaris 10 for MBP and 11 for MP. @ WWDC 2016.

http://wccftech.com/amd-polaris-gpus-launch-june/

So, Nvidia is trusting in FinFET 16nm and AMD in 14nm. It'll be interesting to see, what other differences there will be.. they seem to be focusing on different markets.. Nvidia comes with the GTX 1080 monster GPU and AMD with laptop and upper mid-range GPU's (which are still going to be as fast as Fiji today). That's why AMD is bringing now the Dual Fiji.. but eventually Nvidia will wipe the table with it when it comes to perf/watt. In the laptop segment, it will be the opposite...

HDMI 2.0a and DisplayPort 1.3 could finally mean new external displays for Apple.

UPDATE:

Digitimes: "Nvidia is expected to unveil its Pascal architecture at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2016 in April, and will announce GTX 1080/1070 GPUs in June for an official release in the third quarter. Mainstream Pascal-based graphics cards will become available in the fourth quarter."

So we have to wait untill Q3/2016 to actually have GTX 1080?

 

[Bubba Satori]

Polaris 10 an 11 are rumored to come out in June 2016. I believe that Macbook Pro and MP both will be updated then. Polaris 10 for MBP and 11 for MP. @ WWDC 2016.

http://wccftech.com/amd-polaris-gpus-launch-june/

So, Nvidia is trusting in FinFET 16nm and AMD in 14nm. It'll be interesting to see, what other differences there will be.. they seem to be focusing on different markets.. Nvidia comes with the GTX 1080 monster GPU and AMD with laptop and upper mid-range GPU's (which are still going to be as fast as Fiji today). That's why AMD is bringing now the Dual Fiji.. but eventually Nvidia will wipe the table with it when it comes to perf/watt. In the laptop segment, it will be the opposite...

HDMI 2.0a and DisplayPort 1.3 could finally mean new external displays for Apple.

UPDATE:

Digitimes: "Nvidia is expected to unveil its Pascal architecture at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2016 in April, and will announce GTX 1080/1070 GPUs in June for an official release in the third quarter. Mainstream Pascal-based graphics cards will become available in the fourth quarter."

So we have to wait untill Q3/2016 to actually have GTX 1080?

That might be a reference to desktop Pascals.
Mobile Pascals are supposed to come out first.

 

[wallysb01]

You are talking revenue. I'm talking profit.

Beyond this, all the numbers you can think of don't mean a thing when you look at HP's annual report, given their close to 50% market share in global workstation sales. The Printing and Personal Systems Group includes "commercial PCs, consumer PCs, workstations, thin client PCs, tablets, retail point-of-sale (‘‘POS’’) systems, calculators and other related accessories, software, support and services for the commercial and consumer markets" and "commercial printer hardware, supplies, media, software and services, as well as scanning devices." All of that stuff together made about US$ 1.3 billion in fiscal 2014. Even if you assume that the only thing which turned a profit for HP in those groupings were workstations sales, you're still several billion off of your floor. Dell, number two in workstation sales, looks like it made a tick over US$ 1.3 billion in the last four quarters from all it divisions combined.

So, for the sake of your argument, where are all your billions of workstation dollars going? Or, perhaps, the simple answer the right one: it's a small market with very narrow margins, and there isn't a company out there which makes a lot of money selling workstations.

Seriously, if you can find an annual report showing me a company making lots of money selling workstations, please post it.

Size of a market is typically NOT measured in profit, but in total revenue. Sorry for your confusion on this matter.

And in what world is $1B not "lots of money"?

 

[AidenShaw]

Perhaps we should consider the worldwide sales of servers in our discussion . Some of these units might actually be used as workstations instead . I tried to discover the sales figure, but the best I could find were quarterly sales from more than one source . Server market is bigger than the workstation market .

Very wise, Grasshopper.

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That might be a reference to desktop Pascals.
Mobile Pascals are supposed to come out first.

The rumours are that GP104 (Titan class) Pascals will be shipping soon.

Just Bing for "GTX 1080" for tons of hits.

 

[dpny]

Size of a market is typically NOT measured in profit, but in total revenue.

Have fun explaining that to your shareholders when they ask why your margins hover around 3% of revenue.

The question is why Apple doesn't put the effort into nMP that it puts into other products. The answer is that workstations sales are minuscule compared to the general computing market--about 1.1% of sales--and that the number one and number two workstation vendors, who, between them, account for something like 70% of market share, make very little money selling the machines they do make. Anyone can look those numbers up.

Workstations are a niche market with very little profit in them. It's not a personal attack. It's just how things are.

 

[Machines]

Have fun explaining that to your shareholders when they ask why your margins hover around 3% of revenue.

The question is why Apple doesn't put the effort into nMP that it puts into other products. The answer is that workstations sales are minuscule compared to the general computing market--about 1.1% of sales--and that the number one and number two workstation vendors, who, between them, account for something like 70% of market share, make very little money selling the machines they do make. Anyone can look those numbers up.

Workstations are a niche market with very little profit in them. It's not a personal attack. It's just how things are.

It used to be Apple sold a lot of computers to well-to-do prosumers , based on marketing efforts displaying what real pros were achieving with what I call Apple Professional Desktop Computers (the most expensive, powerful , large and upgradable Systems in the product line sold at any given time ) . I don't think this marketing effort is done any longer , but I don't watch TV much . But Apple did make a lot of sales of less powerful models to prosumers from these marketing efforts , once upon a time . PowerMac G4s, for instance, just by existing indirectly sold some iMacs surely . Apple has a vested interest in keeping a workstation product alive . This will become very important if Apple stumbles badly with an iPhone release , due to say , market over-saturation .

 

[AidenShaw]

Have fun explaining that to your shareholders when they ask why your margins hover around 3% of revenue.

The question is why Apple doesn't put the effort into nMP that it puts into other products. The answer is that workstations sales are minuscule compared to the general computing market--about 1.1% of sales--and that the number one and number two workstation vendors, who, between them, account for something like 70% of market share, make very little money selling the machines they do make. Anyone can look those numbers up.

Workstations are a niche market with very little profit in them. It's not a personal attack. It's just how things are.

So, you're saying "kill the pickup truck"?

Good luck finding a home contractor after that....

And your position is absurd. Whether or not Apple puts a few tens of millions into workstation development is lost in the noise for their billions in revenue from Itoys.

But, the bean counters hate noise, and have no concept of "halo effect".

Time to move to a Z-series or Precision if you want compute power under your control.

 

[Machines]

Time to move to a Z-series or Precision if you want compute power under your control.

Keep to the HP "Z" workstations . I just removed a processor from a Dell Precision T3500 . The darn thing wobbled so much at my station I thought it was made of jelly . HP has better design and build quality and can also teach Apple a few tricks . I can almost entirely tear down my Z800 to individual factory components with just using my hands . Why can't a Mac Pro be designed like that ?

 

[scottsjack]

According to one of the links you posted earlier, HP leads the world in workstation sales. In 2014 HP's net income was US$ 5 billion. Unless you are claiming that all of HP's income comes from workstations sales, I think you're off by one or two orders of magnitude.
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I disagree. I think Apple is okay with niche markets so long as they see them as growth markets.

I don't know if HP leads the world in workstation sales. The one thing I know is that for the price of a nicer equipped Mac mini I bought a Z230 tower last year. It kills the mini in everything but TB and difficulty to service. I added the equipment I need so now for the price of entry-level Mac Pro I have a 3.6GHz quad i7, 32GB RAM, Quadro 4200 and Blu-ray. The machine has been spectacular and flawless, much nicer than HP's consumer boxes.

The HP Z does not diminish my Mac Pro love but does make me realize that enthusiasm for a machine like the Mac Pro is a historical thing whose time sadly has come and gone.

 

[dpny]

So, you're saying "kill the pickup truck"?

Pickup trucks are usually the best-selling vehicles any US car maker sell. Workstation sales are about 1% of PC sales. If workstations were pickup trucks, we'd all be using them.

They're the Ferraris of the computer world, and Ferrari hasn't turned a profit on car sales in years.

But, the bean counters hate noise, and have no concept of "halo effect".

This is bizarre. The halo effect from iPhone sales is the reason Apple is the only PC maker not to see YOY sales declines.

 

[wallysb01]

Have fun explaining that to your shareholders when they ask why your margins hover around 3% of revenue.

The question is why Apple doesn't put the effort into nMP that it puts into other products. The answer is that workstations sales are minuscule compared to the general computing market--about 1.1% of sales--and that the number one and number two workstation vendors, who, between them, account for something like 70% of market share, make very little money selling the machines they do make. Anyone can look those numbers up.

Workstations are a niche market with very little profit in them. It's not a personal attack. It's just how things are.

Lots of successful businesses operate on about 3%, dpny. Plenty of shareholders would be happy to be pulling in 3%, too btw. Have you seen what CDs, money markets, etc are at? You seem quiet disconnected with the way businesses actually operate. 3% of something like $10-20B/year is $300-600M. Its nice that you think this is "very little money". I'm guessing that's not an opinion shared by very many non-Tim-Cook CEOs though.

Anyway, yes, I agree that these margins and total revenue are small potatoes FOR APPLE, and their lack of effort on the MP, while disappointing, is understandable. But that doesn't mean workstations sales need to be relegated as a "niche". Also, there really isn't any point to segregate out workstations from servers, and even just enterprise computing in general, because they are all often very much components if not even the same boxes. You want to pick on HP like, "gosh its just $5B/year", but a HUGE part of HP are workstation/server/enterprise sales and according to Forbes' they bring in the 19th highest revenue world-wide. They may be a long way behind Apple, but good lord man, they are a GIANT and non-PC computer sales are a huge part of their business.
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Pickup trucks are usually the best-selling vehicles any US car maker sell. Workstation sales are about 1% of PC sales. If workstations were pickup trucks, we'd all be using them.

They're the Ferraris of the computer world, and Ferrari hasn't turned a profit on car sales in years.

This is bizarre. The halo effect from iPhone sales is the reason Apple is the only PC maker not to see YOY sales declines.

You're mixing analogies here. In terms of sales volume, they are more like Corvette to Chevy. But in terms of getting work done, its more like their Silverado. Car analogies are problematic for lots of reasons, one of which is that while many people buy trucks, most of them actually only rarely use the truck functionality. With automobiles, its somewhat like people are happy buying the workstation equivalent but then for the most part just using it as if it were a 13" laptop.