Looks like the end of the road for mac pro

[deconstruct60]

I disagree. If all of the manufacturers mentioned in that article can manage just over a million a year together, that's a declining market.

There is a bit of hyperbole that the core of the workstation market was actually made up of many millions before. Not really. There are oscillations when the world economy goes up/down. There has been some periods where the workstation has been more stagnant than declining. The overall workstation market is not a significant growth zone overall though. Largely a zero sum game of treading water with limited set of clients.

I remember when big commercial/financial printers would have several hundred PowerMacs in use at a time.

200 at 400 printers is only 80,000. That is two orders of magnitude off of millions. Throw on top they were not buying 200/yr. Most likely they accumulated a limited fraction of those every year and this is looking at the end result of a multiple year build up. Then to make things worse in annual count these tended not to get retired. Probably a few of those shops where can see the same PowerMac still be used alongside the same printers they were attached to. If replacement cycle is 8 years than that 80,000 looks alot more like 10,000 which isn't much. I think there was a vendor putting mac minis in to vending machines in that range. [ nevermind that for what computing those dated printers need can probably be done by a modern mini. ]


Sampling this small niche doesn't really shed tons of light about what the whole market is doing.

 

[lowendlinux]

Walk into any medium or large company and you will see almost no desktops around.

This makes me smile a bit I'm sure your right but next to my right leg is a Mac Pro on my left is a PC desktop

 

[agazoo]

End of Mac Pro means end of apple and OS X for me, my next upgrade cycle.
If I have to switch to OS Windows or Linux where applicable for desktop as well, I will do so for laptops as well. Another thing in mind is rootless stuff. If they keep moving in this direction, this may eventually trigger transition also.
We use iPads for our enterprise needs, several years in, they would wear off and it won't be too painful to replace them as well.

 

[throAU]

And that was at a time when Apple made most of their $$$ with computer/peripherals sales.

It's also a time when apple face a very real possibility of going completely bankrupt, and was bailed out by microsoft. Times change, and i would argue that decisions made during that period are not examples to hold up as a future path to emulate.

Partnering with a single PC manufacture is much different then licensing it out to anyone who wants to use MacOSX. Even if that went through very possible Apple would restrict on what hardware it would go on to make it stable as possible.

Apple COULD do this, but why? The ENTIRE POINT of buying Apple is that it is a one stop shop, you don't have finger pointing and (ideally) it 'just works'.

The second you get multiple vendors involved, the finger pointing will start. i.e., "Ah, that's a driver problem, it's apple's fault" vs. Apple's response being "The vendor has dodgy hardware".

Right now, you buy Apple and for good or bad you have a single source of blame for any problems you encounter.

so no new macs ...

No new Macs because the timing is not right.

Seriously, if you guys are interested in speculating on Mac hardware you really need to track what intel, Nvidia and AMD are doing. If Intel (especially) has a big announcement on the cards, then expect a Mac hardware refresh. Right now, the only mac i'd expect to see refreshed would be the iMac until say March, at which point you might see Skylake in MacBooks. No skylake yet because it looks like Apple went for Broadwell and they're just not going to refresh a model line that quick. Maybe Skylake in the rMBP 15, but doubt you'll see it in the 13 for a while.

The Mac Pro won't get anything other than silent GPU, RAM or SSD upgrades until new generation Xeons are available. And they are some way off.

 

[iSee]

They have an existing product line that Apple could more easily adapt for OSX than create a new machine of their own that has a low profit margin. Guys like me want dual procs, PCIe slots, internal storage and OSX. Apple doesn't make the machine we need. Having say an OSX capable Z800 make all the sense for everyone all around.

Apple already had an existing product with all that but decided to stop updating and selling it. If they wanted to sell that kind of machine again they would bring back the old Mac Pro in an updated form, not adapt Z800s.

I don't think there's much chance of that happening though... What would cause them to change their mind? Even if the new Mac Pro is a complete failure, I think they'd just kill the new Mac Pro, not bring back the old form factor. (Realize they could have kept sellling and updating the old Mac Pro even once the new one came out -- they are very different products. But they didn't. That tells me they don't think it's a viable product line.)

 

[tuxon86]

I'm presently prepping up 4 brand new Z440 workstation. Really nice machines with Quadro K4200 to be used for Catia/Smarteam. I can't even hear them sitting right in front of them at ear level... And they look real nice too.

 

[Derived]

First of all don't use the term 'third world'. It's a Cold War term that isn't used in any legitimate discourse since 1990. The term now used is 'developing world'.

Secondly, please don't patronise us coloured people as being a bunch of dumbasses who can't use anything more complex than a mobile phone. Across Asia and Africa many people are the outsourced employees for media production, coding software, designing websites, and moderating all the junk westerners post on social networks. And we have our own computing and entertainment sectors that are always growing too.

Thanks.

I'm just trying to read about the Mac Pro and here you are trying to turn this into 1) a conversation about you and 2) trying to turn this into yet another page on the internet where people argue about "race"....take it to Gawker, not here. Not productive at all.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I'm just trying to read about the Mac Pro and here you are trying to turn this into 1) a conversation about you and 2) trying to turn this into yet another page on the internet where people argue about "race"....take it to Gawker, not here. Not productive at all.

You're a bit late. We let this go days ago

 

[Derived]

I do not believe is the end of the Mac Pro but I do believe is super expensive and that you could resolve in the mean time with an iMac. But yes, Apple was very optimistic/pretentious with the new mac pro. It is not possible that you needed to spend almost $10K to get an actual super fast computer, that configurations should have cost $6K at the most.

You're aware that when it came out, you literally could not build it for the price they were charging for it, right?

 

[Larry-K]

You're aware that when it came out, you literally could not build it for the price they were charging for it, right?

That didn't mean it represented a good value.

 

[Bubba Satori]

RIP Mac Pro.

I was $500 away from buying a Power Tower when Steverino
pulled the plug on faster less expensive Macs.

 

[Larry-K]

RIP Mac Pro.
I was $500 away from buying a Power Tower when Steverino
pulled the plug on faster less expensive Macs.

I had a SuperMac Clone, great machine, Steve could have learned a thing or two.

 

[Derived]

he Scrooge McDuck money pit." Not a relevant enough number being bought by customers. The execs at Apple look at sales of everything in a weekly meeting. If Mac Pro fall of the scale of all the other Macs sold, then it is probably on thin ice. That is exactly the zone of "Hardly anyone is buying them..." Apple isn't some boutique hardware vendor out to create products for some sub 1% of the population/market. They have never been that company. They aren't out to sell to everybody either, but there is a huge gap between 'everybody' and 'hardly anyone'.

That didn't mean it represented a good value.

I'm confused...you literally couldn't buy the parts for less then they were selling them to you. And they were selling them to you in an anodized, CNC body with OS X pre-installed and all ready to go and fully warrantied. I don't know what more you could possibly want.

Is it a great value now? No. Was it then? Inarguably.

 

[handsome pete]

You're aware that when it came out, you literally could not build it for the price they were charging for it, right?

I'm pretty sure all of those parts comparisons were using Firepro GPUs, which jacked up the cost. You couldn't really do a 1:1 comparison.

 

[goMac]

Apple COULD do this, but why? The ENTIRE POINT of buying Apple is that it is a one stop shop, you don't have finger pointing and (ideally) it 'just works'.

The second you get multiple vendors involved, the finger pointing will start. i.e., "Ah, that's a driver problem, it's apple's fault" vs. Apple's response being "The vendor has dodgy hardware".

Right now, you buy Apple and for good or bad you have a single source of blame for any problems you encounter.

It's been done. They replaced the Xserve RAID with an officially blessed third party replacement they directly marketed.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

It's nothing of the sort. Desktop sales have been declining for a decade now, and it has nothing to do with Apple. Laptops have gotten powerful enough to do most of what desktops used to do, and businesses (which drive the vast majority of computer sales) have responded. Walk into any medium or large company and you will see almost no desktops around. Instead you will find laptops and docking stations and tablets, usually iPads. Apple is merely looking realistically at the industry and responding to where it's going.

I assume you do a lot of walking into medium and large companies, in order to make a statement like that? I suppose there are some Google-esque companies that do everything on tablets or laptops (chromebooks), but I really doubt much work is getting done at large corporations on tablets and laptops. There is a use for laptops when the employee travels frequently, but laptops just don't last as long as a desktop being run 7/24.

Not saying there aren't a low percentage, but to say "any medium or large company" is a bit much to swallow.

 

[goMac]

I was $500 away from buying a Power Tower when Steverino
pulled the plug on faster less expensive Macs.

You didn't miss much.

 

[RAMtheSSD]

I have previously hypothesised that OSX will be released as a free OS that can be installed on any PC so there is no need for a Mac Pro when you can build your own workstation. The hypothesis can be gathered from a number of clues:

- the OS has become free.
- Apple has stepped up under the hood security improvements to combat malware, unsigned software and root access. This is a sign that they are planning a rapid expansion of the user base and don't want the OS to be plagued with the kind of viruses and bad software Windows has had problems with.
- Metal. This API would be useless to talk about if Apple was only going to use sealed up computers using mobile GPUs. It can only really be shown off on gaming class desktop GPUs.
- App Store and iTunes Store. These make more money than most of their hardware lines. By increasing the user base with OSX they can earn even more money.
- iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Again, having a larger OSX user base will increase the sales of their gadgets at a time when sales are beginning to stagnate.
- It won't harm iMac or MB/MBP sales. It may in fact increase Apple notebook sales to supplement all those new desktop users.
- To combat the threat of Windows 10. Let's face it, it's a great OS and many Mac users are raving about it. It already has more users than Yosemite according to latest numbers. Apple needs to challenge this in a substantive way before it erodes tablet and phone sales.
- All those Hackintoshes can be converted to legal OSX installations overnight and help create a wave of no-cost proselytisers.

Done.

I had not thought about this in this manner before and while it does make perfect sense, it is a bit scary. I hope that someone at Apple reads this because if they do, another way to make a Mac Pro for those of us who love ours would be to sell me a new daughterboard with the latest XEONs built in; a kind of plug and play upgrade. For a more kick ass upgrade, add a water cooled option. In short, if they would sell a new mother and daughter board for my nice and solid aluminum castle, many if not all Mac Pro 1,1 -5,1 owners would beat a path to their door.

I hope Mr. LaBamba is not correct in his assertion as much as I hope those that predict the death of the Mac Pro are equally incorrect but I cannot fault their reasoning and that bothers me because I love being labeled a "liberal hippy" thanks to the unmissable Mac Pro on my desk.

So now, to propose a totally different idea: In the same manner as the MacBook Pro is to the Air and the plain MB, the next Mac Pro could easily be a supercharged iMac sporting a 12 core XEON and a really powerful video card PLUS that PCIe based parallel processing thing that Intel makes quietly and that I've been drooling over for over a year. It would have the horsepower for serious academic computing and with that 5k monitor, it would be a serious contender without, of necessity, having a different form factor. In fact, if they leverage the Thunderbolt interface, they could just sell a box consisting of a box with the aforementioned components that would me plug compatible only with a special 2 into 1 interface available only on the XEON powered iMac Pro. I hope I am wrong.

I really like that they build the whole widget and I hope that they never give that up -look at the mess Android is and the insanity of maintaining Windows.

 

[RAMtheSSD]

I assume you do a lot of walking into medium and large companies, in order to make a statement like that? I suppose there are some Google-esque companies that do everything on tablets or laptops (chromebooks), but I really doubt much work is getting done at large corporations on tablets and laptops. There is a use for laptops when the employee travels frequently, but laptops just don't last as long as a desktop being run 7/24.

Not saying there aren't a low percentage, but to say "any medium or large company" is a bit much to swallow.

There is one good reason for laptops at large corporations and it is that the maintenance is hugely simplified. The employee gets a call, brings the laptop to the IT department (that now looks like an Apple store) and turns it in. In exchange, they get an identical machine (with all the maintenance done) that turns into their machine when they log into their iCloud paid for by X corporation (I am sure Apple would love the profits and the builtin marketing) and suddenly, it's like they never left.

The old fashioned way, takes a cart and an IT tech running around back and forth to replace the machines or worse, try to fix whatever problem the user has in real time. Either way, it is disruptive and puts two very different cultures in more contact than either desires. Who wouldn't prefer to work on a user's machine away from the user and the other people that will "suddenly" have problems that need fixing "this very instant"?

So, the scenario is not so far fetched. That being said, and in defense of the Mac Pro, and the concept of the workstation in general, businesses deal in commodity computing, STEM people need the detailed rendering and modeling that makes advances in their fields more attainable and with more targeted efforts. I can spend years in a lab and not advance the field as much as if, through modeling, I discover that A leads inevitably to L so I would not advance the state of the art by going through B through K as I would by looking at how L becomes M. There might not be that many Mac Pros needed in academia but it is a prestige market. Imagine an ad wherein Watson and Crick (and Franklin!) discover the same as they did in that other reality (that 1953) only in THIS 1953, they used a Macintosh to model their findings and tell me that they wouldn't have iMacs flying out the door.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

There is one good reason for laptops at large corporations and it is that the maintenance is hugely simplified. The employee gets a call, brings the laptop to the IT department (that now looks like an Apple store) and turns it in. In exchange, they get an identical machine (with all the maintenance done) that turns into their machine when they log into their iCloud paid for by X corporation (I am sure Apple would love the profits and the builtin marketing) and suddenly, it's like they never left.

I work for a large corporation, and in our offices we use desktops. Strangely enough the procedure you mentioned for laptops is how it all works for us too. Our desktops are taken away and we just get a new one plonked on our desk. We have in internal App Store so with a few clicks it's all up and running again. The broken desktop gets fixed and either comes back to us later or we keep the one we were just given.

The desktop market is alive and well.

 

[Larry-K]

I'm confused...you literally couldn't buy the parts for less then they were selling them to you. And they were selling them to you in an anodized, CNC body with OS X pre-installed and all ready to go and fully warrantied. I don't know what more you could possibly want.

Is it a great value now? No. Was it then? Inarguably.

No, it was a lousy deal. You got stuck with 2 GPUs whether you needed them or not, and they were over-hyped for most people's usage, you needed an expensive external housing for supplemental storage, you had the Apple Tax on RAM and the SSD Array, and the 12-core option had very disappointing single core performance.

In contrast, my oMP 12 core 3.46GHz with much more storage, better single GPU performance, better single core performance, very good 12-core performance and more RAM, cost less than 5 grand, that's a good value.

 

[rawweb]

No, it was a lousy deal. You got stuck with 2 GPUs whether you needed them or not, and they were over-hyped for most people's usage, you needed an expensive external housing for supplemental storage, you had the Apple Tax on RAM and the SSD Array, and the 12-core option had very disappointing single core performance.

In contrast, my oMP 12 core 3.46GHz with much more storage, better single GPU performance, better single core performance, very good 12-core performance and more RAM, cost less than 5 grand, that's a good value.

I agree, my 12 core 3.33 beast is doing circles around my similar spec trash can at work. My geek bench page illustrates the humor. Plus I got the video card I want in mine thanks to @MacVidCards and all of his wonderful efforts. All for much less than what my company paid for the new pro.

We classic Mac fans should unite and find a way to manufacture our own logic boards for custom upgrades once these things are a few to many generations behind. If Apple won't make our machines, we'll take matters into our own hands...if only...I'll stop dreaming. Hoping for another 3-5 years out of my 2010 before I have to really start worrying...

 

[Larry-K]

I agree, my 12 core 3.33 beast is doing circles around my similar spec trash can at work. My geek bench page illustrates the humor. Plus I got the video card I want in mine thanks to @MacVidCards and all of his wonderful efforts. All for much less than what my company paid for the new pro.

We classic Mac fans should unite and find a way to manufacture our own logic boards for custom upgrades once these things are a few to many generations behind. If Apple won't make our machines, we'll take matters into our own hands...if only...I'll stop dreaming. Hoping for another 3-5 years out of my 2010 before I have to really start worrying...

My friend down the hall was fit to be tied after he gave his old machine to a minion and got a new 12-core. He'd ask for it back, but she does all the really hard work, so it's in his interest to let her keep it.

 

[dpny]

This makes me smile a bit I'm sure your right but next to my right leg is a Mac Pro on my left is a PC desktop

The vast bulk of corporate PC purchases are POS HP/Dell machines to run MS Office, email and whatever internal apps run through a browser. Where I'm currently working it's mainly mix of 13" Dell i7 laptops with docking stations and 1080 monitors. They buy them by the truckload and use them until the keyboard or trackpad stops working. When they need arises for something more powerful, you will find it, but for the most part its laptops and iPads.

 

[dpny]

I assume you do a lot of walking into medium and large companies, in order to make a statement like that? I suppose there are some Google-esque companies that do everything on tablets or laptops (chromebooks), but I really doubt much work is getting done at large corporations on tablets and laptops. There is a use for laptops when the employee travels frequently, but laptops just don't last as long as a desktop being run 7/24.

Not saying there aren't a low percentage, but to say "any medium or large company" is a bit much to swallow.

I will give you the benefit of what I'm seeing as a freelancer in NYC. I've worked in almost the large banks/financial houses, most major ad agencies and am in and out of prepress/output places. As I said above, the vast majority of corporate PC purchases are for machines to run Office, Outlook and whatever internal apps run through a browser. For this you don't need anything more powerful than a cheap i5 laptop. Give the desk a docking station and an external monitor and you're set.

When you find a need for more powerful machines, the companies will but them. But easily 85% of the people working never need anything outside of Office and Outlook. Depending on what you do, you might not even need a laptop. I'm seeing more and more senior people, who spend most of their time answering email and massaging clients, use an iPad for almost everything.

It's the same where I'm working now. Several floors of 13" Dell i7 laptops, with a smattering if MacBook Airs, and one part of one floor with all the powerful machines. The handful of guys we have looking into VR have nicely spec'd out ASUS towers with i7-5x six-core processors and 980s. The retouchers have cMPs. The programmers have MacBook Pros. They run OS X, and Windows through VMWare. The RIPS run off of OEM Windows machines. The designers are all on MacBook Pros, and the production people are on Mac Minis, except for one guy who refuses to give up his slowly dying cMP. And it's the same in the several global offices of the larger company. The video and motion graphics people, obviously, have all the best toys, but there are nine of ten of them in the entire company, and they are supported by teams of people answering emails and using Excel to forecast.

So while I haven't done a survey, I feel pretty confident in saying that. Personally, to me, it's a little terrifying how quickly American Business would grind to a halt without Powerpoint.