Given there's little development on Apple's behalf due to the outsourcing of the hardware development, I find it hard to believe that software development availability time was the governing factor if they truly intend to keep the MacPro in it's current form.
Contractors don't work for free. If Apple doesn't cut them a check I doubt they are going to work now and maybe get paid later. The same factor that reassigns Apple software folks from working on Mac Pro oriented software to other projects can just as easily hire other external contractors to work on other projects that Apple execs deem have higher priority.
As per that $120B burning a hole in their pocket, I don't actually see that at all. Quite the opposite in fact. Even the front page articles posted here in MR indicate that they're in no hurry to rid themselves of that liquidity (not like they're in danger of a hostile takeover).
I'm not saying Apple is going to use any of the $120B to develop a new Mac Pro. They don't need to. There is plenty of funds in the cash flow from operations to fund a Mac Pro (and all of Apple's other products) . That is the whole point. Money is flying in faster then they can even save it. The primary point is that they are not going to panic if sorting this out is going to take 4, 8 , or even 12 quarters. Apple isn't worried about short term results. They are going to execute against long term (relative to the rest of the industry) plans.
There is zero need to pull anything from their cash pile at. Apple is effectively self-insured and their own banker. If they loose a patent case. Doesn't matter. If a product fails. Doesn't matter. If they pick a product mix that isn't quite optimal. Doesn't matter, there is time to fix it. In short, it allows Apple to make deep, thoughtful, deliberate decisions about where they are going.
But rather they're sitting on it while they wait to decide on what to do with it, and those decisions are carefully weighed regarding their long term strategy,
The vast bulk of that money isn't there to be spent or distributed at all. It is there just that no rational press starts talking about how Apple is doomed and about to go bankrupt. As Apple grows bigger they need a bigger and bigger pile to keep the doom and gloom folks at bay. It isn't going to spent in the normal order of operations, product mix, or really even on most normal acquisitions (acquihire and tech tidbit buys).
It is a big club they can "speak softly but carry a big stick" in a number of areas in the pursuit of various interests.
When the iPad and iPhone cool off from red hot growth perhaps then they will use it more as major investment reserve but for now bigger is better just because it is bigger.
Haven't noticed any particular purchases aimed solely at the professional market lately, and take that as yet another indicator that this market has taken a significantly decreased role in their product line.
They don't need to. The problem they had in the late 80's is that Mac market share had dropped below critical levels. When Macs were heading down to 2-3% of the personal computer market very few sane software vendors are going to follow Apple down to even lower levels. Without a viable software ecosystem the platform has major problems. ( desktop Linux for example. ). When the software ecosystem was weak then it was critical for Apple to make a small number of major (relative to free cash available) strategic investments.
The professional software market does not solely run on the Mac Pro. In fact, that was one of the major problems with very high end audio/video was that needs all sorts of additional doo-dads to make a workable system. Now that even the current mainstream hardware can do reasonable jobs without modification, Apple doesn't have to buy the company so there is a "mac only" option.
Placing bets on "professional software" is less risky in part because most of the pro software is run into the ground with 'death spiral' pricing. Apple buys some $2,000-10,000 per seat software and reprices it so that it isn't killing itself and ta-da it is not too hard to at least minimally recoup the investment. Most more broad based software doesn't have death spiral problems so typically presents higher risks. So when Apple had not so large money to invest they invested safer. (and along lines of interest the CEO already had ... Jobs half time Pixar CEO isn't very suprising he investing associated with A/V content business since that was his other day job too. )
the bigger payback Apple got from that early return of Jobs era though was on iTunes. Which was much more risky but had a much bigger upside than any of the other "pro" stuff they bought.
Running the Mac App Store is going to have a far deeper and lasting impact on a healthy Mac ecosystem then generating a "pay day" for a small handful of companies selling out their business that has plateau'ed or are in decline.
Apple has fixed the software ecosystem problem by
1. roughly doubling the Mac base.
2. Putting the Mac user base on a growth path to at least maintain that perctage relative to the classic PC market.
3. coupling OS X tools and libraries to a much larger ecosystem ( iOS ).
There is no need to step in and rescue under-performing software titles, since the normal investment capitalists will fund OS X software now.
I get what you're saying, but even if they take this approach, this will have a negative effect on sales volume due to those that will go for the latest hardware at the time they're purchasing (those leaving Apple).
It is not a long term strategy. It is far more likely a short term strategy to bring them back into alignment with the Intel release cycle. It should be obvious to all at this point that they are off. It is also immaterial why or how they got off. If the objective is to get back on they can but it will be non-optimal.
Apple's major need is to get back to a somewhat predictable release schedule for more than to be perfectly aligned with Intel's schedule.
There's also the negative effect on quarterly sales figures that will wait for the newer hardware to arrive on such a release strategy for Apple (eventually get these sales, but only during the quarters Apple is offering the latest hardware <on par with PC vendors>).
No. The weak PC vendors have to closely align themselves with the cycle but Apple has much wider wiggle room. Apple doesn't have years of wiggle room but they certainly have quarters.
At least as long as Apple is on the extremely solid financial footing and most of the rest of the PC industry is one banana peel slip into a huge fiscal problem (if not already in one ... cough Dell and HP).
This is one of the significant issues for me (and what I just posted). It's small enough now that a lot of workstation vendors are feeling the pinch, and given that Apple is an even smaller player in this particular segment, the damage that they'd cause themselves in this market, may be untenable, causing the demise of the MP as we know it.
But those are also the kinds of contexts where Apple can come in and "reinvent" the category by address the users in a different way that is a better fit with the more forward looking technologies. Part of the decline of the workstation business is that they are just milking the same cows. There is little to no innovation other than myopically cranking benchmarks and marketing gimmicks. VGA and PCI slots .... baggage.
I don't think they are interested in OpenCL any longer, particularly when I see the changes made to OSX. User experience is focused on improved integration with the consumer devices, not professional users.
Actually going with a 100% Nvidia line up is more damaging to OpenCL than any user experience move. It is only going to add to the proprietary CUDA code inertia.
Apple is integrating with iOS for the same reason Apple took very significant steps to integrate with Windows in the late 90's to present. Primarily because they both greatly out number it. OS X positioning itself as a market dominating player is beyond delusion. It is not. It never will be. There is
always going to be more widespread OS ecosystems that it is going to have to integrate with. The PC war was over almost two decades ago. It is long past time to get over it.
Still requires PCIe lane counts in excess of the mainstream CPU's though, so boards would still have to use the performance oriented chips (enthusiast socket, which is currently the LGA2011).
Right. Which means it makes sense to move the Mac Pro into the future if making those adjustments can lead to an expansive market.
Exactly, and if this scenario comes to pass, the resulting product isn't really a workstation.
Eventually it largely will. The debate is perhaps as to whether it will take 5 or 10 years to get there. At some point Intel puts 10GbE , Thunderbolt, and a huge GPU into the CPU package and then the whole workstation market is on a giant slippery slope to permanent niche market.
It would not be surprising if Ivy Bridge E5 1600 still had 4 and 6 core options with perhaps a top end 8 core one. If so it one trend could be toward doing SoC like consolidation even on this subset of Xeons also.
As per pricing, the box can be similar, but adding the monitor could put it over the iMac. But the advantage to this implementation, is that the user can select their monitor and escape the glossy screen or size complaints.
Not really if look at the trends. IPS monitors keep dropping in price. It is now in the $300 range. In another year, they will likely drop down into the $200 range (at least for smaller sizes). Pricing a headless iMac on top of iMac prices won't provide very little or nothing at all price separation.
Apple addressed the glossy screen issue in the latest iMac. We'll see if it is satisfactory or not. But a better screen is the answer to a flawed subcomponent; not a new, largely overlapping product to promote cannibalization. That strategy has driven the overall PC industry into the dismal innovative state it has been in for the last 4-5 years.
