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It took Apple FIVE years to update the Mac Pro?

T

tubeexperience

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Feb 17, 2016
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As the title said: It took Apple FIVE years to update the Mac Pro?

What are they doing at Apple?

Do them come to their offices in the morning, drink slurpees, and go home?
 
Apple isn't dumb. As much as we like to complain about "Apple is doomed" etc etc they know exactly what they are doing. All decisions are a gamble to one degree or another and they've certainly made some strange decisions in our eyes but at the end of the day they're here to earn money. I suspect the reason the Mac Pro and IMacs have been left languishing for so long is because as much as we love them they just don't produce the money like the iPhone, laptops, etc do. Most folks on Macrumors are pretty rabid about their love/hate of Apple but we are just a small portion of the consumer base Apple attends to.
 
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tubeexperience said:
As the title said: It took Apple FIVE years to update the Mac Pro?

What are they doing at Apple?

Do them come to their offices in the morning, drink slurpees, and go home?
Click to expand...
Apple has not updated the Mac Pro. Today's "new" entry Mac Pro is simply yesterday's "better" hex core config demoted to the entry config.

They've shuffled the deck chairs on the Titanic.
 
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tubeexperience said:
Do them come to their offices in the morning, drink slurpees, and go home?
Click to expand...
i think, at least some of the main design team.. and Jony Ive himself, were working on the apple campus over the past few years.. amongst other things. (not all components of the building are standard.. some of the custom parts/systems are developed - and produced- by apple themselves.)

but that aside, people like that don't show up to work, work, go home, not work..
they're always working.. even when they're not.
 
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Skoal said:
Apple isn't dumb. As much as we like to complain about "Apple is doomed" etc etc they know exactly what they are doing. All decisions are a gamble to one degree or another and they've certainly made some strange decisions in our eyes but at the end of the day they're here to earn money. I suspect the reason the Mac Pro and IMacs have been left languishing for so long is because as much as we love them they just don't produce the money like the iPhone, laptops, etc do. Most folks on Macrumors are pretty rabid about their love/hate of Apple but we are just a small portion of the consumer base Apple attends to.
Click to expand...

You are right about product development being driven by profit (aka greed).

This motivation used to have a wide scope (aka having cutting edge pro machines or great networking gear or a line of servers supported the apple brand and encouraged developers to buy the hardware resulting in indirect profitability), but now bean-counter Tim ruthlessly looks at the bottom line for each product.

But you are wrong in your faith that apple knows exactly what they are doing... look at the apple car mess, and the rumoured last minute fall back to a small battery in the tb mbp... and now the reversal on their plans for dropping Mac Pro.
 
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You are right about product development being driven by profit (aka greed).
Click to expand...

Unfortunately you have those pesky shareholders to appease, just one of the evils you have to contend with when your a publicly traded company.
 
Its a shame this has happened and shame on apple for this. They need to remember when things were bad and how everyone stood by them no matter what. In my mind there is no excuse, only reason is greed. They can sell more iPhones than Macs !! Plus notice no more commercials of Mac vs PC, they don't need to anyone more now that their coffers are fulll.
 
If Apple is after quick profit instead of building up its customer base by allowing easier switch/inflow of developers/spread of Mac culture, then I guess it will not be at the top that long. The most serious problem is this sense of feeling that Apple is no longer the company valuing the real professionals or prosumers. If their answer is iMac Pro, then wow.

I get people's argument that Apple is discarding iMac and Mac Pro compared to iPhone and other consumer stuff, but Apple is no longer the company in blink of bankrupt.
 
It’s hard to improve on perfection.

The cMP was a highly evolved desktop system, apple tried to go a new direction with the nMP, but missed the market.

It really shouldn’t take this long to produce a Pro desktop, so we can only assume Apple is trying to reinvent the wheel yet again.

Time will tell if they are going to succeed.
 
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Well Apple has really just followed Sony..

They launched the trash can Mac Pro the same year as the PlayStation 4 was launched.

Their are strong rumours the next Mac Pro will launch next year.

And their are strong rumours the PlayStation 5 will launch next year.

So just watch out for those PlayStation 6 rumours to know when Apple will update the Mac Pro again...
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Skoal said:
Apple isn't dumb. As much as we like to complain about "Apple is doomed" etc etc they know exactly what they are doing. All decisions are a gamble to one degree or another and they've certainly made some strange decisions in our eyes but at the end of the day they're here to earn money. I suspect the reason the Mac Pro and IMacs have been left languishing for so long is because as much as we love them they just don't produce the money like the iPhone, laptops, etc do. Most folks on Macrumors are pretty rabid about their love/hate of Apple but we are just a small portion of the consumer base Apple attends to.
Click to expand...

You need a Mac to make apps for iOS..... they have the market there but with only the Mini and laptop offering new designs to take advantage of it.
 
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DearthnVader said:
It’s hard to improve on perfection.
Click to expand...
The cMP wasn't even close to perfection.

It borrowed the flawed case from the PowerMac G5, without rethinking the design. Flaws:
  • Painfully sharp handles, which not only made it too wide to fit horizontally in a 19" rack - but also tended to be bent in shipping unless it was carefully packed to ensure that no pressure was exerted on the handles
  • A yuge case - really yuge for what you can put in it (yuge)
  • Only four hard drive bays - half of what some competing large towers had
  • Only four PCIe slots
  • Mismatched memory - four DIMM slots on a single socket with tri-channel memory, and eight DIMM slots on a dual socket with six memory channels
  • Decently sized power supply - but power distributed through the motherboard so that anything other than one lower end GPU required extraordinary steps to get power. (we consider an RTX2070 to be a "lower end GPU")
"Perfection" is not "form over function", and the cMP was all about form.
 
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tubeexperience said:
As the title said: It took Apple FIVE years to update the Mac Pro?

What are they doing at Apple?

Do them come to their offices in the morning, drink slurpees, and go home?
Click to expand...

Because Mac Pro 2013 is a failure like Power Mac G4 Cube. Since Apple invested tons of money on manufacturing Mac Pro 2013 in USA, it is not easy to discontinue Mac Pro 2013 and it is logical.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/...ewRpq9TRwWcL27Xft2MAwvrVPsxeQsfqlk_XiYkOe_Wy0

They never learned anything from their past. Around 1990, they moved their factory from USA to Asia because of manufacturing prices. Apple tried several times to make Mac in the USA but they totally failed. And yet, they invested tons of money on manufacturing Mac Pro 2013 in USA.

Upgradability was not even considered for Mac Pro 2013 at all. Adding a new CPU and GPU was impossible due to fixed thermal design which is meant for specific parts. Apple designs their computers to manufacture them for 3~6 years with the same design in order to pay off changing the manufacturing process. But Mac Pro 2013? Not able to upgrade hardware due to its design and size. They just cant discontinue Mac Pro 2013 so that's why they've been selling it for more than 5 years.

Yes, Apple is being stupid in these days. Not powerful enough to satisfy customers and charge tons of money. People say you need to use their own software like Final Cut Pro in order to feel the real power of Macintosh. Guess what? Mac has only 5 professional software to use. There are tons of professional software out there which does not take advantages from Mac but the hardware itself.
 
Skoal said:
Apple isn't dumb. As much as we like to complain about "Apple is doomed" etc etc they know exactly what they are doing. All decisions are a gamble to one degree or another and they've certainly made some strange decisions in our eyes but at the end of the day they're here to earn money. I suspect the reason the Mac Pro and IMacs have been left languishing for so long is because as much as we love them they just don't produce the money like the iPhone, laptops, etc do. Most folks on Macrumors are pretty rabid about their love/hate of Apple but we are just a small portion of the consumer base Apple attends to.
Click to expand...

How do they know it wouldn’t make money if they don’t come out with it?
 
Wait for enough demand and then fill it. If the demand isn’t there yet they focus on portables and phones.

Mac Pro is still a niche market overall. It fills the needs of some business and creative urbanites. Outside the cities almost nobody has one. So they wait for the demand to reach a certain level and when they no longer support older machines with updates.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Wait for enough demand and then fill it. If the demand isn’t there yet they focus on portables and phones.

Mac Pro is still a niche market overall. It fills the needs of some business and creative urbanites. Outside the cities almost nobody has one. So they wait for the demand to reach a certain level and when they no longer support older machines with updates.
Click to expand...
HP likes for Apple to take that approach - it sells a lot of Z-series. ;)
 
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AidenShaw said:
HP likes for Apple to take that approach - it sells a lot of Z-series. ;)
Click to expand...

Different market. The Z series customers don’t use mac apps and are mostly using these machines for engineering, IT and finance. Windows has a bigger market share so the demand for upgrades is bigger.

That doesn’t mean Apple should take 5 years to update Macs though but they know sales figures and demand better than us.
 
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