More evidence Apple is abandoning the pro market?

[Bubba Satori]

Abandonment: 770 days without an update, news or roadmap.
https://buyersguide.macrumors.com//#Mac_Pro

He is dead, Caesar:
Not by a public minister of justice,
Nor by a hired knife; but that self hand,
Which writ his honour in the acts it did,
Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,
Splitted the heart. This is his sword;
I robb'd his wound of it; behold it stain'd
With his most noble blood.

Antony and Cleopatra
Act V Scene I

 

[Mago]

Apple also has job postings for people with Windows and Linux experience. Obviously OS X is on its way out.

You got it, i did'nt wanted to comment since the entire thread is BS from cMP widows and seems an re-editon from a closed thread (on intention at least).

is not uncommon jobpost from companies seeking skilled pros on rival's product, MS hires Linux, OSX Solaris also Raspebrry Pi users all the time, for the same purpost to have an insider look at what an rival product offers and looking for a clever way to provide an solid and interesting alternative, also companies does that to parametrize things as user experience, productivity etc.

So its obvious the intention and biased purpose of this thread.

 

[radiotamarillo]

Question... did they ever fix the Logic Pro X/Final Cut Pro X interaction? Last time I tried importing a FCPro X project into Logic Pro X, I could not get the tracks right. After working for about a week with Logic tech support, it was determined the 2 programs did not work properly together. Of course, that was about a year ago, so I am curious.

I just looked at this exact issue with the latest version of Logic (10.2.1) and it is still, after a brief test with a relatively simple project, highly unpredictable and buggy.
Sadly, the third party tool XtoPro – designed to facilitate export from FCPX as AAF for finishing in ProTools – remains the more robust solution for importing into Logic Pro X.

Of all the "low hanging fruit" that Apple is accused of ignoring with regard to professional or even semi-professional users' workflows, this broken feature within two currently shipping and "supported" apps is, in my view, among the most egregious.

 

[Mago]

as of today, apple has not abandoned the professional market.. when the 'desktop' computer is wiped off the apple product roster, there will be alternative technologies in its place. (and just in case it's not obvious- apple WILL discontinue mac pro eventually)

i differ while its obvious the current product managers are disconnected with Mac Users (a corporate culture issue), Apple Future strategy cant ditch Pro Macs (desktop,laptop and Workstations), is not only question of features or capabilites on devices like tue iPad "Pro" (as pro as a goPRO camera, just advertising gimmick), how I see is more compromised the iPad future than the Mac Pro, simpe: with the coming of the Phablet most people DONT NEED A TABLET, and most are more comfortable with an Phablet and a Macbook (with an full os suporting things like Flash, Java, 3rd party Apps, and a loot of advantaes that have an True OS over an Mobile OS adapted to a bigger format, no matter how polite is the GUI still behind in productivity).

I dont believe the iPad sales will grow again.

The iPAd PRO is not an pro product, neither photgraphers like it (youtube evidece photographers deception on the iPad PRO and the new Photoshop).

With the imminent fail of the POST-PC era thinking Apple could ditch some Mac to focus only on iPads its naive as much.

Apple has deep issues on how they manage the OS/X related products (missing HW updates is an big failure), while there is some hope ( I consider the Mac Pro an real intention to stay in the Pro-Market (OK the Apple's PRO Market, not te same as Windows/*UX Promarket).

 

[flat five]

@Mago.
yeah, i don't disagree with you.

my statement about the imminent discontinuation mac pro (and desktops in general.. by all manufacturers) was aimed further into the future instead of near future 'post-pc era'..

regarding nmp, i have zero reason not to believe phil schiller when he said the mac pro redesign will be the apple pro computer to carry through the decade. (like- we'll probably see 4 iterations total of nmp.)

 

[mrxak]

I don't think Apple is abandoning the pro market. That implies a certain amount of intent. I think they just don't understand the pro market, and so the pro market feels abandoned and then abandons them. New leadership would probably help. It really does feel lately like Apple is incapable of doing more than one thing at a time. So, they try to push things on Pros that tie into what they're already doing and then hope for the best. Thunderbolt caused us to get the nMP. The iPad caused the iPad Pro. These are technologies they developed for the consumer market and those choices dictated how the rest of Apple's markets progressed.

I think a better word for it is simply neglect. Apple is neglecting the pro market. They haven't abandoned it, nor intend to. They're just bad at tending to the pro market's needs.

 

[dpny]

I don't think Apple is abandoning the pro market. I just think the pro market is a steadily shrinking piece of the overall computing pie and Apple is responding accordingly. With the both the massive growth of mobile—Apple surpassed one billion active iOS installs last quarter and we're seeing double digit YOY mobile growth in China and India—and the steadily declining sales of desktop machines, the pro market is slowly, and steadily, transforming into a niche market. Most people don't need more than 4 cores (real, or HT) or workstation-level GPUs.

I remember when you needed G4 or G5 to get any serious work done. Now, a Mac Mini can handle anything Adobe can throw at it outside of serious Photoshop work and After Effects/Premiere, and a five-year old MacBook is more than enough for every day computing needs. I know professionals who spend almost of their outside work computer time on their phone or tablet. They do web browsing/shopping, email, Netflix and casual gaming just fine. If they need to run Excel or Word, they have a laptop, but that's about it. I know professional photographers who run their business on 13-inch MacBook Pros. I know kids who only use laptops for writing papers or Minecraft.

In short, commodity hardware has finally caught up with every day computing needs, pushing those who need more to the edges of the computing market. It's even happening in the gaming world. Asus and others will sell you a laptop with an i7 and a full desktop 980. For ~US$500, I can build you a PC which will run GTAV at 60 fps all day with no need for an 8-core i7 or a 980Ti.

While I have a 2010 Mac Pro, if I'm honest, I could probably survive just fine with a Mac Mini. I have an i7/GTX 980 PC for gaming, an iPhone and an iPad. The Mini could easily take care of any day-to-day stuff, and it runs InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop and friends just fine. I love my Mac Pro, and I've had fun upgrading it, running VMs and generally screwing around, but my next machine will likely be a MBP.

I think Apple is simply responding as the market is changing. It reminds me of watching the decline of the workstation market in the 90s. When I was in school, from the late 80s to the early 90s, you needed a DEC, Sun or a NeXT to get anything serious done. Ten years later the massive increases in performance, and drop in cost, resulting from AMD's challenging of Intel's CPU dominance, coupled with the emergence of Linux, meant you could build a desktop machine as fast, or faster, than a $40,000 workstation for 1/10th the cost. And, if you remember, all those workstation makers went out of business very quickly (or, in NeXT's case, were acquired by Apple).

None of this addresses the frustration and anger of watching Apple's focus shift from its traditional base of creative professionals to a wider audience. And, obviously, none of this addresses people with thousands and thousands of dollars, and many years of experience, invested in an operating and ecosystem who must now think about switching away from their preferred platform. But I think it does address the idea that Apple has shifted focus away from serious desktop machine because it's more interested in making shiny toys. iPhones and iPads are no more toys than Apple's early 90s consumer machines were compared to a fully loaded NeXT Cube. They're simply where computing is headed, whether we like it or not.

 

[Bytehoven]

I'm fairly new with Logic and have no experience with FCPX. Here's a link for using FCPX inside of Logic. It looks like it is working here.


http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/how-to-integrate-fcpx-into-logic-pro-x/

​

Thanks
[doublepost=1453950065][/doublepost]

I think Apple is simply responding as the market is changing.

... I guess it doesn't hurt the mythology to advertise some bleeding edge Apple "micro" hardware user doing something on an iPad or iPhone instead of a work station, AND at the same time selling it as cool.

But hey, what do I know, I'm obviously a self imprisoned hostage of a soon to be extinct workflow.

 

[dpny]

But hey, what do I know, I'm obviously a self imprisoned hostage of a soon to be extinct workflow.

The number of people shooting and editing people on their iPhones/iPads/iMacs far outnumbers the number of people doing it professionally. How many of those people are doing professional work? Not sure, but it's hard to argue against sheer numbers.

 

[maxsix]

Apple and their hype...

Post PC Era, what a Flippin Joke that proclamation is!

Unable to see through their "Greedy Glasses" it's all about getting even more fat and happy. We pay, and they laugh all the way to the bank.

 

[MetalCores]

I was talking to a friend the other day who was chatting with apple on choosing a new laptop and they told apple they were going to be using it for video editing and photo editing and apple recommended the MacBook Air... Why they would not recommend a pro for that is beyond me. And they told them to upgrade the ram to 8GB.

 

[flat five]

I was talking to a friend the other day who was chatting with apple on choosing a new laptop and they told apple they were going to be using it for video editing and photo editing and apple recommended the MacBook Air... Why they would not recommend a pro for that is beyond me. And they told them to upgrade the ram to 8GB.

because a mbp is 2-3x more expensive and your friend wasn't sounding like he(she?) was willing to spend $3000 on a portable editing station.

pretty sure if your friend was talking like "i want the badassest apple laptop to handle my video/photo crap.. i have money".. he'd of spent $3000.

 

[MetalCores]

The 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB and 8GB of ram is $1299 the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro with 8GB of ram and 256GB is $1499 so $200 more

 

[Xteec]

I was talking to a friend the other day who was chatting with apple on choosing a new laptop and they told apple they were going to be using it for video editing and photo editing and apple recommended the MacBook Air... Why they would not recommend a pro for that is beyond me. And they told them to upgrade the ram to 8GB.

Stories like this bug me.

If the Apple person was just dumb in not trying to sell a better product which they have already manufactured, then it's a very unhelpful data point because stupidity of one employee does not represent a company's strategy.

On the other hand, if the Apple person was reasonable, then the story leaves out a lot of information that could lead to that logical conclusion that an Air is best for that person e.g. Casual 1080p video editing on a budget could easily be done on a MacBook Air. Upgrading to a 15 MBP is a huge cost difference; and the 13 MBP is not that much more powerful than the Air especially if price is a factor.

 

[MetalCores]

Stories like this bug me.

If the Apple person was just dumb in not trying to sell a better product which they have already manufactured, then it's a very unhelpful data point because stupidity of one employee does not represent a company's strategy.

On the other hand, if the Apple person was reasonable, then the story leaves out a lot of information that could lead to that logical conclusion that an Air is best for that person e.g. Casual 1080p video editing on a budget could easily be done on a MacBook Air. Upgrading to a 15 MBP is a huge cost difference; and the 13 MBP is not that much more powerful than the Air especially if price is a factor.

Yeah this all makes sense. I guess I just found it kind of odd. I mean if I were recommending a computer to him I would recommend the pro. I actually already recommended it to him before he chatted with Apple. He just wanted another opinion. So now he is more confused lol

 

[Xteec]

Yeah this all makes sense. I guess I just found it kind of odd. I mean if I were recommending a computer to him I would recommend the pro. I actually already recommended it to him before he chatted with Apple. He just wanted another opinion. So now he is more confused lol

I normally recommend the same because retina is just so good but if the person is on a budget and retina is not important I can't justify to them a 13" Pro vs the Air. I've edited video on various setups and my opinion is that the two machines you've listed they're both going to be on the low end of what's satisfying and fairly comparable. For $200 plus tax, I'd tell them to keep the money and get the Air.

 

[sheckylovejoy]

I think the answer to this question is both yes and no. Yes, Apple thinks it is still actively engaged in the professional market. The fact that they obviously spent a lot of energy on the 2013 Mac Pro, both from a design standpoint and also the new assembly facility in the US. Additional evidence is the frequent updates to the two core pro apps, neither of which I use, but I do like FCPX, for the record

But with their typical arrogance, Apple is not meeting the needs of its customers, even though they are quite sure that they are.

I can only speak to my own example. My first Apple product was an Apple ][+ purchased in 1981. Since then I have had an Apple IIc, Mac Classic, Powerbook Duo 210, original toilet-seat iBook (in blue), G4 Tower, G4 Cube, 2 G5 towers and 2 Mac Pros. I have never owned a non-Apple PC except for a few of hackintoshes. Add to that 4 iPods and 5 iPhones and 2 iPads and 4 AppleTVs, and half my career built around FCP, and you can see that I am not immune to the charms of Apple hardware and software.

My 2010 Mac Pro is about to die and I need modern hardware to handle all the 4k footage I'm getting. But Apple leaves me in a difficult situation and for the first time I am seriously considering a Windows workstation.

My current choices from Apple:

1. 2013 Mac Pro I speced out to about $6k (6-core, D500). Add to that another $2500 I will need to spend on new Thunderbolt equipment. This is a premium price for 2013 specs (2 generations behind Intel's current offerings and 1 generation behind ATI), and a platform that is not being regularly updated.
2. 2015 5k 27" iMac all loaded up for around $4k. While it has the awesomest of monitors, it has a single i7 and a single mobile video card and max RAM of 32GB.

Tonight I went to a BYO workstation site to see what I could build. It came out to $4300. This included:

• 2x 4 core E5 V3 2600 (1 gen newer than 2013 mac pro) at 3.0 Ghz for 8 cores total
• 2x ATI FirePro W7100 with 8GB (1 gen newer than 2013 Mac Pro)
• Faster RAM and faster flash drive
• I don't have to buy any thunderbolt stuff either
• While my core (and most expensive) apps are cross-patform, I will have to spend some money on new software

So for a little more than the iMac, and just over half the price of a 2013 speced Mac Pro, I can get that beast. If the thought of using Windows didn't make my soul cry out in anguish, I would buy it today.

So my point is this: while Apple clearly thinks they are in our corner, they currently do not make any hardware that is a compelling purchase for my line of work (video), and if the mythical 2016 Mac Pro (formerly the mythical 2015 Mac Pro) ever appears, I'm not even sure that changes the equation that much.

Honestly, the whole thing just makes me want to switch professions.

 

[steveOooo]

What is a pro user in 2016?

I work from home and make most of my money from video post production, a prosumer app like fcpx is fine with me.

Most video editing job apps want someone using premier or avid and after fx. Rarely do I see one for fcpx

The link you've posted is for a job with beats - they have probably been using premier for years and are still there own entity within apple. I'd imagine apple outsource their adverts etc to a video production company.

I personally have been considering a alienware Area 51 workstation but the thing that stops me is having to learn new software in premier (though its similar to fcp7) and um paying much more for it and per month.

 

[wubsylol]

When they discontinue ProRes, they will have abandoned the professional market.

 

[JoSch]

You're just flat out wrong. I don't have to limit the definition of "expandability" to exactly be "you have stick some card in it", as you claim.

Quite the contrary. The nMP design is demonstrably worse for expansion, upgrades, and configuration flexibility in almost every single way than if Apple had simply updated the existing Cheesegrater design with Ivy Bridge, Thunderbolt, and USB 3.0:

• 2 CPU sockets (now only 1)
• 8 memory slots (now only 4)
• Nvidia video card options (now only AMD)
• A flexible number of video cards, from 0 to 4 (now exactly 2, no more, no less)
• The ability to upgrade video cards to options beyond what Apple initially offered
• The ability to support CUDA software (now incapable)
• Internal and external storage expansion (now external only)
• The ability to use many specialized video/audio/storage/interface PCIe cards, such as very high speed local storage, Blackmagic, Universal Audio, etc. (now limited to Thunderbolt options)

On this one point, we agree. Apple dropped all of that flexibility and capability listed above, and yes I agree that it is the problem of anyone who needed it.

Case in point. You listed only the things, YOU need. If Nvidia is such important bullet point, Macs are indeed the wrong platform, because Apple ist notoriously switching component manufacturer, when it needs to, from the beginning. That fact is nothing new.
On the other hand, you always could buy a PCIE cage, plug you card in, connect it to Thunderbolt and you're good to go.
[doublepost=1453973632][/doublepost]

Wow, let's get this definitive form of persuasive argument out to the middle east. Wam bam, it's done man. /sarcasm

As if you would argue.
[doublepost=1453973725][/doublepost]

Jesus my Mini Cooper is expandable. Guess what, a Range Rover is more useful. Even if both can take a tow bar.
Internal expandability need not preclude external expandability. The original form factor had both. FACT. Trying to explain your way out of that, is YOUR problem.
So tell me, how is the nMP more expandable than the cMP?
BTW the below text is copied from the MacPro product page;
It’s our most expandable Mac yet.

It is. It just doesn't fit your narrative.
[doublepost=1453974287][/doublepost]

Question... did they ever fix the Logic Pro X/Final Cut Pro X interaction? Last time I tried importing a FCPro X project into Logic Pro X, I could not get the tracks right. After working for about a week with Logic tech support, it was determined the 2 programs did not work properly together. Of course, that was about a year ago, so I am curious.

This example only proves how hard the interaction between application really is. As a developer, I can tell you that these kind of data exchange is your day's work.

I think what's really happening, Apple has been attempting to redefine what it means to WORK in various creative fields. The whole idea of being able to edit video on an iPad... sure it can be done, but does anyone really want to WORK that way? AND, Final Cut Pro X was a PERFECT example of Apple executing on this "We Know Better" mind set for how people should WORK at editing professional video. Certainly Final Cut Pro X in it's current form is a more compelling alternative, but the release version was a JOKE.

Well, the release version of FCPX was a revelation for me. The perspective of using FCP6 to do project made me cringe. Granted, it's not my day job, but even without all the great features, that came later, I could EASILY work around them.
The recent version is so compelling, that big movies are edited with it.

 

[nigelbb]

In short, commodity hardware has finally caught up with every day computing needs, pushing those who need more to the edges of the computing market. It's even happening in the gaming world. Asus and others will sell you a laptop with an i7 and a full desktop 980. For ~US$500, I can build you a PC which will run GTAV at 60 fps all day with no need for an 8-core i7 or a 980Ti.

While I have a 2010 Mac Pro, if I'm honest, I could probably survive just fine with a Mac Mini. I have an i7/GTX 980 PC for gaming, an iPhone and an iPad. The Mini could easily take care of any day-to-day stuff, and it runs InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop and friends just fine. I love my Mac Pro, and I've had fun upgrading it, running VMs and generally screwing around, but my next machine will likely be a MBP.

I think Apple is simply responding as the market is changing. It reminds me of watching the decline of the workstation market in the 90s. When I was in school, from the late 80s to the early 90s, you needed a DEC, Sun or a NeXT to get anything serious done. Ten years later the massive increases in performance, and drop in cost, resulting from AMD's challenging of Intel's CPU dominance, coupled with the emergence of Linux, meant you could build a desktop machine as fast, or faster, than a $40,000 workstation for 1/10th the cost. And, if you remember, all those workstation makers went out of business very quickly (or, in NeXT's case, were acquired by Apple).

None of this addresses the frustration and anger of watching Apple's focus shift from its traditional base of creative professionals to a wider audience. And, obviously, none of this addresses people with thousands and thousands of dollars, and many years of experience, invested in an operating and ecosystem who must now think about switching away from their preferred platform. But I think it does address the idea that Apple has shifted focus away from serious desktop machine because it's more interested in making shiny toys. iPhones and iPads are no more toys than Apple's early 90s consumer machines were compared to a fully loaded NeXT Cube. They're simply where computing is headed, whether we like it or not.

This summarises the position perfectly. Seven year old top end systems with a few upgrades are perfectly capable of handling todays applications & workloads. There hasn't been that much improvement in computer performance in the past seven years so a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 is still a helluva machine for most folks. Intel went multicore because they could improve single stream CPU performance any more. This works well when the applications play nicely with multiple cores but nobody really wants a twelve core CPU. What they really want is a a four core CPU that is 3x faster at single stream performance so it achieves the same overall throughput as the twelve core but really speeds up single threaded applications that are impossible to decompose into multiple threads.

 

[JoSch]

What they really want is a a four core CPU that is 3x faster at single stream performance so it achieves the same overall throughput as the twelve core but really speeds up single threaded applications that are impossible to decompose into multiple threads.

I want a twelve core ;-)

 

[zephonic]

....never mind....


...I really shouldn't get sucked into this again.

 

[AppleDroid]

Isn't this basically the same 400 page thread with a new title created by the same user? Move on, buy a Windows workstation and be happy.

 

[goMac]

The job listing was also for Beats, which already has it's own workflow already established. Apple didn't come in the building as soon as they bought them and forced them to switch their workflow to FCPX.

The Beats team also worked on the Apple Music app for Android, and Apple had job postings for hiring Android engineers. Does that mean iOS is on the way out?