Phil Schiller was quoted as saying "Yeah, my bad when I said that a computer with no expansion slots was 'the most upgradable mac ever'...
....
You know it's true.
No, it isn't true. He said what is also on the website.
"most expandable Mac ever".
I know lots of folks try to use those two words interchangeably but they don't mean exactly the same thing. Increasing the number of drives is not the same as exchanging a single drive for a higher capacity and/or faster one. They are different. One is an expansion and the other is upgrade.
Apple stretching the Thunderbolt ports as the expansion mechanism is true from OS X's point of view. It is more devices on the internal PCI-e network when add the appropriate drivers.
From David Pogue's column next year: "With the epic failure of what is being dubbed the 'iBucket',
There have been hundreds of " iTampon (iPad epic stupid name) " , "iPod phew. FAIL. Archos is way better and more affodable", "No one will every use FCPX in the future", kinds of comments that have been posted over time.
The people who can't see typically post the most on these major inflection points. There is a relatively decent track record of being wrong at least as much as being right. The more exaggerated the name calling though is typically doesn't have a very good track record at all.
It could fail. There is a fair amount of factors needed for success that are technically out of Apple's control. They need a few things to happen.
a. Some significant software applications (plural, not some singular "killer app" ) that take full advantage of what is inside the Mac Pro.
b. Thunderbolt gains more traction in the overall market. More a more diverse set of solutions will appear. Intel needs to let more implementers join the party.
A much higher number of Mac Pro PCI-e card vendors need to roll out more Thunderbolt friendly solutions is a requirement for success.
c. The world economy not tank ( or there is some major disruption)
in turn
a. There are indications they have this lined up. [ Blackmagic and DaVinic Resolve making adjustments , Pixar demo , etc. ] It won't be all applications but if it is shown to be doable by non-Apple who had super early access development teams others will buy in. There probably is some synergy to doing this at WWDC. If smart Apple would ID some more developers to give early access to.
b. Frankly having TB friendly solutions allows PCI-e card vendors to sell to all Mac users. Sure they will be some folks leaving Mac land but pragmatically never had a chance to sell the the most Mac users. The latter is a much larger number.
Way bigger.
c. If large body of folks get very risk adverse... they won't be enough folks who will take a shot to see if it works. They'll look for another box that looks as close as possible the old box they have.
They're calling it the 'Mac Pro II: We're so Sorry Edition'. The Case will include room for 10 SATA hard drives, Dual 16x PCIe cards with plenty of power, and it'll be priced about the same as other computers with the same components. It will also have your choice of 20 aftermarket GPUs to fit your needs and budget."
Never. Gonna. Happen.
Never going to sit a 'II' on it. I would just be called Mac Pro.
Wouldn't be hard to keep same basic design and expand radius a bit to put some extra thin 2.5 HDDs inside. If there is a 2-4 TB gap to incrementally expand the market that SSDs can't fill in reasonable time that is an adaption without completely changing course back.
The reality was that in the old form factor the Mac Pro wasn't doing so hot ( even before the extended E5 transition delay by Intel. ). If this change doesn't work going back to something else that wasn't working isn't very likely at all.
Apple becoming a vendor who sells boxes that look and do everything just like everyone else with completely interchangeable parts with all of those other competitors. Yeah like that has happened in Apple's history.
