http://architosh.com/2015/09/apples-latest-mac-family-portrait-missing-mac-pro/
I don't know...if it's true or not....but something is wrong behind the scene.
Something is far more wrong with folks common sense......
Trade Shows are not a reasonable sampling environment for judging how Macs are generally used. One substantial criteria for trade shows is the transportation cost. iMac all-in-one monitor, "computer" , etc all in one case. Set up? Super easy plug it in. Even worse if have to negotiate with a union labor to doing anything electrical set-up on the show flow. Simpler is even cheaper in that case.
Disbanded the Mac Pro team. Has there been a permanent Mac Pro team for last 6 years? Whenever Apple overalls Mac product X then mac product Y seems to go stale. MBA go through major changes then maybe Mini stops. iMac major redesign and some other mac goes stale. iOS runs into some major roadblocks and OS X staff get pelled off to fill in iOS gaps. Apple does staffing "rob Peter to pay Paul" on a regular and ongoing basis.
There is a growing amount of evidence that Apple is not trying to update the Mac Pro on a yearly basis. If they are on a every 2 , 3 , or 4 year cycle then probably isn't a permanent team in the usual sense of the connotation. At least at the engineering R&D level. Maybe a full time marketing team but development could mainly be a "hobby" and "in your spare time" project most of the time.
The Mac Pro is probably at best a "hobby product" at this point. Limited possibility it is dead, but there is most likely an expectation mismatch at this point. Some customers thinking it is a robustly staffed , 100% full time project versus a "let's do something 'out of box'/'can't innovate my ass' every couple of years" project.
Further on the mismatched expectations, I think Apple thinks Mac Pro class customers only buy systems every 5-6 years so there is no huge hurry to produce new ones every year. The vast majority of Mac Pro customers aren't going to buy one no matter what Apple does. If customers buy slow then production is adjusted to fit. It isn't purely one sided driven by Apple.
IBM's relationship with Apple is way skewed. That isn't about "heady duty, backend computers". It is about mainstream business computer desktops and laptops. IBM manages those for business as an outsourcing contractor. They can actually do bulk buys on behalf of customers too. Those large blocks of Macs that IBM is buying is probably primarily for customers and IBM then does a healthy share of managing those. Same thing with iiPads and iPhones. Business tools handed out to mainstream business folks for mainstream business function. The Mac Pro would be a very tiny slice of that. It is neither necessary or required for the IBM deal. So it not being a prominent feature of the IBM deal means exceedingly little. It isn't "news" or "informative" of the Mac Pro's future in any significant way.
The vast majority of the Workstation market has been and still is Windows. HP and Dell have around 90% of the market. There is not huge stampede out of OS X into Windows. Windows always was there for over a decade (if not two).
There is no top level pointer to the iPods and yet Apple just updated the iPod Touch. The renew cycle is somewhat ridiculously slow but huge leaps from "low common denominator" Apple marketing pages aren't really good at producing deep insight into what Apple is doing other than marketing to the lowest common denominator customers.
