Right, I certainly wouldn't be planning on building a business with the idea of Mac Pro's being a key tool.
That largely a chicken-and-egg issue. That the herd is running purportedly running in another direction would be the only motivator there.
A Mac Pro bought now will still work for 3-5 years. In two years, a business could shift , or not given the Macs available in 2-3 years, to something else if necessary. Incrementally acquiring a few more wouldn't be a large problem with reasonable planning. Going from something like 2-5 Mac Pros to 20-50 would demand a infastructure that goes far beyond just the Mac Pro.
Anyone buying computer hardware now based on industry insights that have to be true for new computers 4-5 years from now is delusional.
The Mac Pro makes Apple money,... they have little direct financial incentive to continue it. It doesn't fit in with their other products any more. Yet they still do sell it.
There is no huge misfit. The Mac Pro does something slightly different, but the function is largely the same, present a GUI for primarily a single user that runs multiple concurrent applications.
The huge problem is not the revenues, it is the growth. The Mac team gets a fixed amount of resources. If there is a different set of Mac that will find and provide significant value to users that more of them will
buy the product then the Mac Pro may get dropped from the line up.
This isn't purely quantity. If Mac Pros are selling around 100K a year then 10K more is 10% growth. That's good. What can't happen is year-over-year things go like 120K , 105K , 100K , 98K , 100K , 99K .
The product is dying is slow death anyway. Apple isn't going to wait till profits go negative to prune that off.
If a product most users find a product to be 'great' it won't put up backward numbers like that.
Obviously there have been discussions on what to do with it and I'm sure there are a lot of consumer focused Apple execs who have no use for the Mac Pro pushing for its demise.
If is far more likely that isn't "consumer focused execs" as opposed to execs focused on what users are consuming/buying. Professionals buy things too. In that sense, they are consumers. When Pros stop consuming then Apple will likely stop making. Relatively no demand leads to no supply.
Just like all those in the news threads who say iMacs and minis are enough, but it's holding on so far.
There are just as many threads filled with a Mac Pro 1,1 is good enough. I'm going to camp out another year or two on my G5. The Mac Pro 2006/2008 was the best ever, nothing since is worth buying. etc. etc.
They can't know the exact damage to the OS X/iOS ecosystem discontinuation would do so they may as well give it one more chance with some new concept.
If the Mac market doesn't grow then it is dead. Period. Long term software development trends toward markets that are healthy and expanding, not shrinking.
If a different product mix expands the overall market then the Mac Pro will get dropped.
If nothing else it could be see as a marketing tool.
Apple doesn't do "loss leader" products. Neither gimmick products. The products either stand on their own with significant contributions the present in and of themselves or get dropped.
Stuff like the 20th anniversary Mac is far more indicative of the bungled leadership of the 90's then anything that Apple has done in the last almost decade and half. Apple is likely going back there in the short term.
I mean I always assumed that is why they bought all the pro apps
You assumed wrong. Apple bought Pro apps to put them into the hands of more people. A common reoccuring theme with Apple has been to put "too expensive for most people" into the hands of many more people. "Personal Computer" brought was limited to unaffordable mini- and mainframe to individuals.
Jobs said as much ... .
" .. .where Steve told everybody point-blank that we/Apple were going to focus on giving them powerful tools that were far more cost-effective than what they were accustomed to… ... "
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/2...-designer-apple-doesnt-care-about-pro-market/
Apple didn't buy those products for "style" points. Neither did they buy the products for the "elite clientele". There is no indication at all that Apple equates 'professional' with 'elitist'
Apple bought the technology to put that technology (and follow ons) in the hands of more people so that they could do more. Expensive just to be expensive is not what Apple does.
and pushed to professionals in the first place, that's what OS X and iOS are too.
iOS isn't even a product. You can't even buy it separately at all. OS X is gradually moving in the same direction. That's because Apple's focus is more on systems. The hardware isn't a gimmick to sell software. Neither is the software a gimmick to sell hardware. Users use systems, not either one of those individually.
When users tell Apple "I only want half of your solution" , that is primarily interpret as don't want the product.
Apple's professional support and ecosystem can continue to market beyond just those who purchase Mac Pros, or at least avoid the damage a potential backlash would cause.
Apple's pro support has
always gone past Mac Pros. In fact making the software increasingly more viable on on Mac Pro hardware only increasing the market to sell that value added support.
Quite similar to how sales of OS X Server went dramatically up after the XServe went away. All the doom and gloom folks forecast it would go down. That is about how well grounded the OS X is "doomed if there are no Mac Pros" stuff is. Apple's follow on move is far more important than some individual product.
