Given all of the complaints about the new MacPro it is hard to believe that it had 8% growth.
The base price of the Mac Pro went up by 17% with the release of the 2023 model. So if these figures
are by value rather than by unit, who knows?
But then, if data like this doesn't even say what it means by "sales" (counting sales by value/revenue rather than unit is quite common, which is why you need to state which it is) then it should be sent back to the student with "Units!? C-" scrawled on it in red biro and otherwise ignored. Not publishing the methodology sends it straight into the trash bin. Knowing that Apple doesn't release this data, so by inference this excludes any sales from the Apple online and physical stores (which offer the most complete range of models and CTO upgrades) means you should then immediately empty the trash...
Junk data is junk data - it doesn't serve to prove or disprove anything.
the mini and studio need to be a bit more than basically a MacBook Air/Pro without a screen.
Except they are - they include extra ports, including things like ethernet that you don't get on a MBP, and the Studio is available with the M2 Ultra (which, presumably will be bumped to M3 Ultra - we'll have to wait to see how that plays out) which isn't available in laptop form. They're probably quieter under load than the laptops, too (discuss).
What has changed is that - short of the M2 Ultra option - with Apple Silicon, MacBook Pros can have virtually the same CPU/GPU power as desktops, whereas with Intel the desktops used higher-power chips. So now, it really does come down to the form factor you prefer, port count and what type of screen you want.
If you don't want mobility, and want something bigger than a 15-16" screen, or a choice of keyboard then a desktop still does the job better and more neatly. You can get a Mini/Studio and third party display for significantly less than the price of the corresponding laptop - and if you were going to need a large/expensive display to go with your laptop anyway, the desktops become a
lot cheaper.
However, if you
do need mobility then a laptop is rapidly becoming the preferred option and the need to get a desktop for performance is diminishing - even with PC/Intel, laptops are becoming more and more capable
and computing is moving back towards something like the old client/server model, where the "server" can be in the cloud, or a big ugly box in a rack down in the basement. I don't think Apple can buck this trend.
It would also be nice to have some sort of capacity for internal drive expansion. Don't need much, but even a single SATA drive bay or m.2 slot would be nice.
Yes, that would be nice - but backwards-looking, now we have fast external connections for HD etc. SATA isn't quite dead yet, but it's on the way out. What
would be nicer is if the Mac Pro wasn't so hugely expensive (and huge - even the Intel version struck me as grotesquely over-engineered and under-designed) because a mini-tower with a bit of internal expansion would still be useful (even if its not the future). I think Apple's problem is that the internal PCIe in the Mac Pro relies on the second "die" in the Mx Ultra chip to add the extra PCIe capacity, so they couldn't do a Mx Max version. Also, I suspect they're running down the "Mac Pro" line, hence they recycled the old Mac Pro enclosure.