Is Apple discontinuing the Professional product lines?

[John Purple]

According to MR Apple has stopped Xserve RAID sales. Apple also took a very long time to refresh it's Mac Pro line and the announcement of the Penryn upgrade for the (up to now) very important MacBook Pro line is still only expected to come, while SONY and others are selling their Penryn based notebooks for a while now (even if they were not able to ship immediately).

This conducts to the question, whether Apple will drop their professional product lines in the months to come and go for consumer products only?

What do you think?

 

[DizzyRose]

MANY Pros use Apple products, so I doubt that they will discontinue the MacBook Pro and/or Mac Pro.

 

[iBlue]

No way. Their recent tendency to be somewhat slow to update (all of) their computers is annoying and greedy (apple definitely loves their small devices lately) but I can't imagine they would lose their pro lines altogether.

 

[McGiord]

I think that they are working very hard to get a new line of MBP, so it's not only adding the Penryn Processor, maybe they are working together with Intel into a new processor architecture that hasn't been announced/disclosed and like any new product faced some issues, and that is the main reason why they haven't released something new yet.
And may be surprise us with extra features that aren't out there yet.

Just my guessing...
________
Harley-Davidson Model BA

 

[John Purple]

I think that they are working very hard to get a new line of MBP, ...

A lot of us is hoping for that, but there is not the slightest evidence, not even rumors (other than "xy-dealer has backorders ...").
There was not any event for the launch of the new MP and Apple missed the most important photographers's event to launch Aperture 2. This would be crazy if they would realy care for the pro market.
On the other hand is putting a lot of their ressources into consumer products as we can see nearly every tuesday.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

They just updated the Mac Pro and they devote a lot of marketing energy to showing everyone how Final Cut is becoming the industry standard (or at least a viable alternative to Avid) in film/video editing.

I don't think they'll be discontinuing it any time soon.

 

[Geetar]

Peter Alexander writing in Film Music Weekly this month says: "With the rumors floating around that Apple may sell its Pro Apps Division (which includes Logic and Final Cut Pro) possibly to Thomson of Canada...."

Is this complete BS or does he know something?

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

Peter Alexander writing in Film Music Weekly this month says: "With the rumors floating around that Apple may sell its Pro Apps Division (which includes Logic and Final Cut Pro) possibly to Thomson of Canada...."

Is this complete BS or does he know something?

I think "apps" is the key word there, and Thomson is on the verge on becoming the #1 information company in the world, so it wouldn't surprise me if they wanted to branch into stuff like this.

 

[Cromulent]

Apple also took a very long time to refresh it's Mac Pro line...

The only reason it took so long was that there was nothing to refresh it too. That was the fastest Intel Xeon available.

 

[speakerwizard]

apple have spent a lot of effort bringing apps like final cut up to spec, they have not long released studio 2 and just released logic studio, aperture just got an overhaul and apple paid a handsome some for the industry standard in compositing which they are due to release with ground up code from motion, this plus the speculation of apple working on an iweb pro and the effort they go to with certification and training in stores etc tells me that they value the pro apps and therefore the pro hardware.

 

[Dzigavertov]

Fcps 3

Speaking of pro apps. Any idea of when Final Cut studio 3 will be relased.
Was disappointed with last release of FCPS 2 with no upgrade to DVDSP. Color did not make up for it. FCPS 3 might be good if shake and motion come together and a updated DVDSP. Any Clues as to the release.

dziga

 

[IlluminatedSage]

no way, apple is just looking for third party RAID solutions rather than making it themselves and competing in the RAID market.

 

[Queso]

I honestly can't see why Apple would sell Logic and FCS when they are such good engines for bringing people to the Mac platform. But then, I also laughed when Thurrott said they were moving to Intel