I'm pretty sure the MacBook Air is the worst selling Mac. The Mac Pro is second to last though.
Anyway, hopefully Jony Ive and crew have come up with a new design. It's been the same for 7 years now.
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New MP on May 18
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I'm pretty sure the MacBook Air is the worst selling Mac. The Mac Pro is second to last though.
Anyway, hopefully Jony Ive and crew have come up with a new design. It's been the same for 7 years now.
Yeah, might be true. They are both meant for a small amount of people, that's why.
Are you comparing dual core laptop to an 8-core workstation?
They are not even close in terms of performance. 15" still sells very well, especially with the new hi res option. Mac Pro is aimed for pro users while MBPs are just consumer stuff. There aren't many who need Mac Pro nor who can afford it.Just telling my opinion but as we all know, Apple ain't so interested about pro market anymore.. The money is made in consumer market
Neither of the last two Mac Pro launches were rumoured before hand other than being expected. Both came earlier than most people thought they would, I don't remember a single suggestion that they would come a week before Macworld 2008 or before Intel launched Xeon 3500/5500s in 2009.
Are you comparing dual core laptop to an 8-core workstation?
Just telling my opinion but as we all know, Apple ain't so interested about pro market anymore.. The money is made in consumer market
I don't think he meant the performance of the machines, because the difference is pretty obvious.
He was referring to the sales of Mac Pro vs. MBP > 13", but I honestly see the sales of MBPs considerably higher than those of the MP.
It's not because of the price (low end MP and medium MBP are pretty close together), I'd justify this with the fact that computing goes away from the fixed desktop working space. People like to compute everywhere they go, which is why they opt for a mobile computer.
Apple should be interested in the Pro market because if they dump this section, who is going to develop all their nice software?
XCode doesn't run on a Windows machine.
Unless we see considerably more performance and upgradability (perhaps by using Lightpeak) in Apple's consumer products like the iMac, I believe we won't see the Mac Pro being dropped for the foreseeable future.
I agree. At one time the pro market was important to them. Just after Jobs came back to Apple the pro market was key to Apple's survival. They knew they had to hang on to the creative market. Now if they lost most or even all the pro market they'd barely skip a beat. They'd sell enough iPhones, iPads, and laptops to keep the stockholders very happy.
I think the Mac Pro fits less and less with Apple's product design ethos. The Macbook, MBP, iPad, iPhone and iMac are all pretty much closed devices, with only a few user serviceable parts in some of them.
The trend is definitely towards selling sealed & shiny aluminum boxes that you plug in and use until Apple deems them obsolete by not supporting them anymore in system updates...At which time you're just meant to go out and buy a newer model. It's not all bad, they do make nice stuff that generally lasts a long time but Apple definitely want to be the ones who call the shots when it comes to upgrades and product lifespan.
Mac Pro's are the exception to the rule at this point in time, but with the increased processing power in the i7 iMac, I can see Apple trying to push Pro users into that product line more and more as time goes on....Maybe even developing a new machine called the "iMac Pro". Professionals who do things that require multi core CPU work like 3d rendering and lots of video rendering are a small segment of the market compared to the majority of Mac users these days.
Apple is clearly going after profits from mass production of devices that are designed for consumption of content and apps from iTunes. It's good for their bottom line and the share price.
The trend is definitely towards selling sealed & shiny aluminum boxes that you plug in and use until Apple deems them obsolete by not supporting them anymore in system updates...At which time you're just meant to go out and buy a newer model. It's not all bad, they do make nice stuff that generally lasts a long time but Apple definitely want to be the ones who call the shots when it comes to upgrades and product lifespan.
Mac Pro's are the exception to the rule at this point in time, but with the increased processing power in the i7 iMac, I can see Apple trying to push Pro users into that product line more and more as time goes on....Maybe even developing a new machine called the "iMac Pro". Professionals who do things that require multi core CPU work like 3d rendering and lots of video rendering are a small segment of the market compared to the majority of Mac users these days.
Apple is clearly going after profits from mass production of devices that are designed for consumption of content and apps from iTunes. It's good for their bottom line and the share price.
I used to wait for a new Mac Pro announcement so that I would get a new display card for my two-year old model.
I no longer care .
Battlefield Bad Company 2 on PC is great!
Steve sucks.
I no longer care
.Battlefield Bad Company 2 on PC is great!
Steve sucks.
I used to wait for a new Mac Pro announcement so that I would get a new display card for my two-year old model.
I no longer care
Battlefield Bad Company 2 on PC is great!
Steve sucks.
Thank you for that enlightening post - we can hardly wait to read your future contributions to our Forums
This seems the way it's going to me as well. The workstation market in general will change, as the core counts per die are increasing. By 2014, SP processors will have 8 cores and be able to fill both the high end desktop and workstation markets.
We've already seen the beginning of this with the i7 and SP Xeons (LGA1366 parts). The only difference between them, is that ECC is disabled on the consumer verions. Next will come the core count increases.
Xeons are moving past the workstation market to a purely server one, in order to satisfy the desire for cloud computing/high efficiency servers which are ultimately cheaper (not just the price/performance ratio, but it figures positively into data center requirements, such as lower HVAC and power usage).
This seems clear to me as well given the recent product direction.
And don't forget, there's plenty of money to be made in the content as well, and Apple's already involved in that end (iTunes/app store), and persuing an even greater aspect/chunk of it (i.e. new areas such as iAd, not just expansion into what they've already got going).
So they're taking this market extremely seriously it seems.
I was thinking....If Apple phase out the Mac Pro and funnel existing pro users into a high end iMac, after a couple of years they will be able to argue that the new iMacs are the fastest and most powerful Macs they've produced and nobody will be able to say otherwise.
The problem I have with the iMac design is that it doesn't allow for upgrades of a GPU at all and changing the hard drive is rather awkward at best. Typically, I'd like to get 2 or 3 GPU upgrades into a pro machine's life cycle given the cost outlay.
Apple are all about the bottom line these days. You can't blame them I guess, it's just business. It's a bit painful for pro users who have a genuine fondness for the values Apple used to have and which they still like to trade on. Seems the pendulum has swung the other way and they're on a search and destroy mission for new revenue streams.
Problem is, OS X is just too good a platform for me to drop. Even if I end up having to use a PC workstation again for rendering, I imagine it will just be a rendering box and the bulk of the creative and setup work will still be done on a Mac.
Quite possible their marketing team would do something like that in such a situation.
Others would have the same desires, and I can't blame you for wanting upgradability.
The iMacs as they exist, aren't truly expandable. USB and FW aren't capable of much, but a single drive or so before the bandwidth is maxed out, and external devices can make a cluttered mess to deal with.
But if they do make the iMac the MP's replacement, they'll likely wait until LightPeak will be available to them, as it can sort of make up for the loss of HDD bays and PCIe slots, though the initial bandwidth still isn't nearly as substantial (10Gb/s = 1.25GB/s, and PCIe 2.0 is 500GB/s per lane). Quite a difference IMO, and will matter to users (I still see a situation where users would be forced to update their systems more frequently than they'd want to, or possibly be able to afford consistently).
Less money per system, but the MTBR would make it more expensive in the long term. I also see it as more wasteful of natural resources, which flies in the face of Apple being "Green" oriented.
They're a large corporation, and the whole point of existing is to make as much money as possible in a given quarter.
The biggest part of this to me, is the software investments users have in OS X versions. Some people may not be able to switch all that readily, as the software can easily out-price a system. In some cases, a single application suite is enough to do this.
Observation on MP vs MBP
My observation has been that the people that I see with Mac Pros really do NEED the performance. They need as much speed as they can get and a lot of fast storage. For those people, time is money. I often see MP users with a stack of work and the faster they get done, the faster they get paid. The MP is in a dedicated area with a big gorgeous, calibrated monitor. The people that use them don't need or even really want portability many times.
When someone talks about the MP and compare it to the MBP I can't help wonder if you are talking into account not only the role that they are meant to play but all of "other" things that you will find with a MP. People often buy i7 MBPs to surf and play games. I don't think many MP uses are playing Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. On the other hand, I doubt many MBP users have several TB of storage next to their machine.
Just seems that comparing MP and MBP is like comparing pickup trucks to semi trucks just because they both have the word "truck". Along the same lines, semi truck are needed, even if they are out sold by pickup trucks. In some case, the work being done by the Mac Pros will drive the need for several additional iMacs or MBPs.
Just my 2 cent.
My observation has been that the people that I see with Mac Pros really do NEED the performance. They need as much speed as they can get and a lot of fast storage. For those people, time is money. I often see MP users with a stack of work and the faster they get done, the faster they get paid. The MP is in a dedicated area with a big gorgeous, calibrated monitor. The people that use them don't need or even really want portability many times.
When someone talks about the MP and compare it to the MBP I can't help wonder if you are talking into account not only the role that they are meant to play but all of "other" things that you will find with a MP. People often buy i7 MBPs to surf and play games. I don't think many MP uses are playing Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. On the other hand, I doubt many MBP users have several TB of storage next to their machine.
Just seems that comparing MP and MBP is like comparing pickup trucks to semi trucks just because they both have the word "truck". Along the same lines, semi truck are needed, even if they are out sold by pickup trucks. In some case, the work being done by the Mac Pros will drive the need for several additional iMacs or MBPs.
Just my 2 cent.
That's an awful lot of generalizations there. While I'm sure there are many people who game on MBPs, I highly doubt that is the general consensus of the MBP user base. There are more practical alternatives with dedicated built PC gaming laptop rigs that are also far cheaper than MBPs. Having a mobile GPU, which is also not user upgradeability enforces this too I think.
You may be surprised as to actually how many pro users out there really do use Macbook Pros for their work.
That's what irks me a bit as well. If Apple were really serious about being green and clever with resources, they would be going the other way and making all their systems more user serviceable. As it stands, you could be junking a perfectly usable system just because you need a better GPU. I think in most uses, CPU's have got over a significant performance hump and 3 year old processors are still able to cope with most of what modern software throws at them. GPU's are still making significant strides forward though.
Seems to me Apple love to play the green card when it suits them, but not if it cuts into profits. I still think they make fantastic systems though, particularly the pro workstations......I'll be sad to see them go if it happens.
Are you comparing dual core laptop to an 8-core workstation?
Do you have problem understanding yourself ?
You were speaking about USERS, not performance.
Your post was: Mac Pro is for different users than iPhone/iPad/MBPs are. You said nothing about performance.
It can be true for iPad users (other target), but a "pro" could have a MP and a MBP for working when on-the-go.
Especially 15" and 17" models are quite expensive for the "average user".
It's just your opinion. A >2000$ MacBook Pro is definitely NOT a "consumer product". And we are going to have new MPs, in the next future.
Well, a Mac Pro owner can and usually has a laptop too but how many MBP owners have a Mac Pro? I know it sounds confusing but I hope you got my point.
Sure higher-end MBPs are expensive but if you want a bigger than 13" screen, you have to pay, I've seen hundreds of cases where OP has gotten a 17" for emailing, just because of the screen. But how many buys a Mac Pro for emailing? In MBPs you are forced to pay for the bigger screen, you don't have option for 2.4GHz 17" 1499$.
MacBook Pro is nowhere near a real Pro laptop, only thing that makes it pro is the three letters. It's still clearly meant for consumers, or does a pro laptop have 2 USBs?
All other Macs than Mac Pro are mainly meant for con- and prosumers. Mac Pro, on the other hand, is for pro users, in terms of performance, expandability, price etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple discontinued Mac Pro as it requires a lot extra work. All drivers, configuration options, software updates etc.. costs a nice $. By the time, Apple has more and more dropped the support for pro market. Especially now as iMac uses desktop CPUs, Mac Pro, at its current price and specs, is not a good buy. Another loss for Mac Pro is better and stabler Hackintoshes which can be built for less than 1000$ and they are as fast as Mac Pro.
I'm not saying I want Mac Pro dead, but looking at Apple's current policy and dictatorship of Steve, it'd not surprise me. Apple is starting to be a mobile device company, not a pro device. Steve loves multitouch and things that work immediately out of box plus things that cannot be opened or upgraded by user.
Not that you're saying iMacs can replace Mac Pros, but just because iMacs may finally use desktop processors the lack of ability to easily add RAM and inability to add HDDs make it a deal killer for even may prosumers. And I don't think that Steve is ready to concede the Pro market to Hackintosh builders though many may try this route.
Apple is stressing the mobile market, that's for sure.
RAM is easy to add but HDs ain't. That's the biggest issue for me too, I have FOUR externals which are so ****ing slow!
I think Steve thinks that a consumer needs no more than 2TB anyway as it'd not be hard to make HD user-serviceable, just a slot to the side where it can easily be removed, just like PS3 hasExpandability is currently the only nice feature in quad Mac Pro
Well said and frustratingly true.
I really like the idea of the Mac Pros (being more user serviceable and therefore lasting longer) than having to buy an iMac every 3-4 years for the very reasons you mention. I do love the iMacs but I'm increasingly frustrated by not being able to do more than upgrade memory (w/o risking warranty damage).
If the "mini tower" patent that was mentioned about a month ago at Patently Apple becomes a reality, I'd jump even though my situation does not call for Mac Pro power at this point. I would hate to see the market disappear and it kind of bums me out that my iMac purchases help fuel the fires...
Guess I'll have to come up with an excuse to start designing heavily again.
Pickup trucks are delivered to the dealer on semi trucks... case and point...