Surely Apple has employees who read these forums...

[Wowereit]

Apple doesn't build what _you_ want. They build what _many_ people will _buy_.

I've already got questions about my 2016 MBP from average people.
"Where are the USB-ports?"
"Is that a Lightning-port?"
"So you can't connect external displays?"
"Isn't that inconvenient?"

Most people don't know what a USB-C-port is.
They look at it and wonder how you are supposed to plug in your thumb drive.

It didn't bother me and it's the right decision in the long run, but lots of people will have a hard time buying a machine "without ports"

 

[linuxcooldude]

It's a very important sector in that regard and IMO Apple are making a HUGE mistake not realising this.
If Apple continue to alienate and ignore the pro segment, they (and their products) will lose their aspirational status pretty quick.
Apple used to offer this with their Pro line up.
They no longer do so.
It's a HUGE mistake IMO.

Apple has refocused its computers/software to consumers & prosumers rather than professionals but still caters to the professional market. Biggest example, when Final Cut Pro X was released many users lamented Apples decision and insisted its not catering to the pro's needs.

I said it would not matter long term as tomorrows professionals and power users will embrace new and faster ways to create. That Apple is focusing on the prosumer.

Than this article took my idea one step further:

http://www.redsharknews.com/post/it...-entire-nle-space-with-the-next-final-cut-pro

It states that Apple does not care what professionals think because these changes are not for them, but for the future editors and creators.

Apple has one advantage over all other NLE's, they don't have their own devices to run them on. By having video editing software on all its iPads/iPhones and Macs people will gravitate to what they already know and currently use. iMovie pretty much comes free on all Mac desktops. As most studies have shown most people usually use the default applications already installed for their most basic needs first.

So its a natural progression from iMovie to FCP X. These people will then tend to bring these apps with them to their professional careers.

So while these older pro's who may have moved on to other apps and eventually retire, the younger generation will bring new Macs with Apple software into the future.

 

[nnoble]

You didn't read, or perhaps didn't understand his entire post. It's not that long. I suggest reading it again.
[doublepost=1483203956][/doublepost]

Uhh, but what most people are asking for is for apple to continue making updated version of things they ALREADY HAVE DONE IN THE PAST! You speak like we're asking for apple to make something entirely new out of whole cloth.

For example: A desktop computer with modern, upgradeable components that aren't proprietary and is expandable. The Mac Pro fit that bill for more than a decade!

But now for apple to do that would be going against their company philosophy!?!? How much coolaid have you drank, and where did you get so much of it?

You take from the post what you will. And I shall do likewise.

 

[Larry-K]

So while these older pro's who may have moved on to other apps and eventually retire, the younger generation will bring new Macs with Apple software into the future.

Well, at least they'll be traveling light, since Apple only has two "Pro Apps", and is unlikely to put any sustained effort into anything that doesn't run on a phone in the future.

 

[fastlanephil]

So its a natural progression from iMovie to FCP X. These people will then tend to bring these apps with them to their professional careers.

So while these older pro's who may have moved on to other apps and eventually retire, the younger generation will bring new Macs with Apple software into the future.

I believe Apple is doing similar with Logic Pro X. LPX has little support for multi-timbral hosts that are used mostly with orchestral libraries and Apple has said there is no plan for this to change. What Apple are supporting is pop/rock and especially the electronic genre. This is quite evident with their acquisition of Camel Audio and the subsequent inclusion of Camel's popular Alchemy as part of the LPX package.

Find someone that has no interest in electronic music and there is a good chance they are middle aged or older. Find someone that has little interest in orchestral or classical music and there is a good chance that are not middle age or older. Go to the opera or symphony and notice the color of most people's hair. Some of this can be attributed to maturation of musical taste but there does seem to be a trend. Major movie soundtracks may be the last bastion of orchestral sounds.

 

[johannnn]

I don't get you at all. They should make the exact product you desire because you desire it? That's basically your argument.

Seriously, not many people in the world wants a tower. Apple has limited resources and instead (rightly so) spend that time creating something beautiful and forward-thinking like a MBP with a touch bar.

Surely Apple has employees who read these forums... right?? I don't see how there's any way Apple doesn't know what consumers want in their products... So why the heck doesn't Apple just make the products we want already? I'm so sick of Apple ignoring our wants and needs.

This is all I'm asking for:

• A Mac Pro with a tower-like design (similar to the the pre-2013 Mac Pros).
• Up to 128 GB RAM (and user-upgradeable)
• GTX 1080 or Titan Pascal graphics card options
• A non-proprietary SSD, and plenty of room to add my own SSDs later
• PCI-e slots for expandability

THAT'S IT! That's all we want! Just make it happen. It seriously can't be that hard to make a product like this....

In fact, if you're really so adamantly against making the Mac Pro that everyone wants, please let me make it myself. All you need to to is give me permission to install macOS, and give me Nvidia Pascal drivers.

In the meantime, I'm really enjoying my new, custom-built Windows PC. But I'm really, really, really missing macOS. It's so much better than Windows!

 

[JazzyGB1]

Seriously, not many people in the world wants a tower. Apple has limited resources and instead (rightly so) spend that time creating something beautiful and forward-thinking like a MBP with a touch bar.

Why does it have to be an either or situation?
You are implying that Apple can only 'innovate' a touch bar on a MacBook Pro because they no longer build a Tower Mac?
Utter nonsense.
Apple have more resources now than ever before. They developed the iMac, iPod, iPhone, MacBook Pro, iPod Touch and iPad back when they were truly 'innovating' all whilst simultaneously offering a tower based Mac, so it's not a lack of resources that has led to the culling of the tower.
After laptops, most of the PCs sold around the world are towers, so your statement that 'not many people in the world want a tower' is without foundation - there's millions.
There's plenty of people on this thread that want a Mac based one too.

 

[johannnn]

"Plenty of people in this thread" won't change the stock price. The trash can (although the specs should be updated) is totally enough, and preferable, for almost everyone. You can never please everyone.

 

[JazzyGB1]

"Plenty of people in this thread" won't change the stock price. The trash can (although the specs should be updated) is totally enough, and preferable, for almost everyone. You can never please everyone.

The Trashcan isn't 'preferable' for 'almost everyone' - that's just another statement without foundation.
Years ago the Cube established that an 'everything outside the box' Mac was not what people wanted, that's why it flopped so spectacularly and was discontinued so quickly.
Changing the shape from a cube to a cylinder doesn't change that.
This thread may not change the stock price, but I guarantee that a successful Mac tower is preferable to a failing trashcan.

 

[shaunp]

Thank you! The AVERAGE consumer barely knows how to power off their MAC.

Very true. BUT.... Apple is completely and utterly failing to cater for the professional and enthusiast markets. It brings out a £4k laptop with aspirations of it being a workstation-class laptop, but it's a bit of a lame duck. And its high-end desktop is powered by coal.

Once Apple is no longer seen as being 'cool', and the next thing arrives, who is their intended customer base? All the pro's and enthusiasts who were forced to move over to Windows due to lack of credible hardware choices from Apple?

Apple seem to forget that while we represent a small part of their market we are influencers with our friends and families. They see us running something that is non-Apple they start asking us questions and the next thing you know they've got one too.
[doublepost=1483305501][/doublepost]

The Trashcan isn't 'preferable' for 'almost everyone' - that's just another statement without foundation.
Years ago the Cube established that an 'everything outside the box' Mac was not what people wanted, that's why it flopped so spectacularly and was discontinued so quickly.
Changing the shape from a cube to a cylinder doesn't change that.
This thread may not change the stock price, but I guarantee that a successful Mac tower is preferable to a failing trashcan.

I had a trashcan. Marvellous piece of engineering if you want a very small and quiet desktop and are prepared to put up with the limited expansion capabilities. I did say 'had' mind you - I sold it and replaced it with a DIY PC that has 6 cores (expandable to 22), 128GB RAM and a load of SSD's. It's a bit bigger than the Mac Pro, but I can do what I like with the hardware.

If Apple would have made a tower Mac Pro, I would have kept it. No question, a tower is a much more useful workhorse than a trashcan Mac Pro.
[doublepost=1483305708][/doublepost]

"Plenty of people in this thread" won't change the stock price. The trash can (although the specs should be updated) is totally enough, and preferable, for almost everyone. You can never please everyone.

No it is not. It's overpriced and underpowered. I had mine 2 1/2 years and sold it. I got just over half my money back (£2300). For that I built a very fast and solid PC. The Mac Pro doesn't even compete very well with the iMac these days.

It's an outdated piece of junk. Where as a tower would please pretty much everyone who doesn't want an iMac. It's a great example of miniaturisation, but to what end? It's far too easy to outgrow the Mac Pro and it's woefully out of date.

 

[niploteksi]

You say "give us faster horses" and Apple says "here's some shiny new cool shoes with laces tied together so you won't lose them"...

 

[johannnn]

No it is not. It's overpriced and underpowered. I had mine 2 1/2 years and sold it. I got just over half my money back (£2300). For that I built a very fast and solid PC. The Mac Pro doesn't even compete very well with the iMac these days.

It's an outdated piece of junk. Where as a tower would please pretty much everyone who doesn't want an iMac. It's a great example of miniaturisation, but to what end? It's far too easy to outgrow the Mac Pro and it's woefully out of date.

Of course the specs should be updated, a 4 year update cycle is ridiculous. My argument was that sexy sells, so to advocate for a tower design is beyond crazy.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Of course the specs should be updated, a 4 year update cycle is ridiculous. My argument was that sexy sells, so to advocate for a tower design is beyond crazy.

And yet the tower sold way better than the 'sexy'. It's no more crazy than dropping the dud cube when it saw the market reacted with disdain to the 'high design, low functionality' pet project. Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

 

[pat500000]

Mbp?.....................lol. ........,,,,,,.....that defected looking so called "computer."

 

[linuxcooldude]

And yet the tower sold way better than the 'sexy'.

Last time someone claimed the same thing, I asked him to show the data. Only to have him admit it was only his opinion.

 

[dogslobber]

Steve Jobs liked that quote Henry Ford (apparently) gave, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”. Apple too, in their own way, have defined what their vision is, and people have followed it, until now.

That's okay if you're Steve Jobs but Tim Cook != Steve Jobs! Cook isn't even trying to make the horses faster; he's happy with the current speed of the horses, hence no Mac Pro update since 2013.
[doublepost=1483382878][/doublepost]

Steve Jobs understood it, that's why he said there are cars and trucks in computing. And Mac Pros are (were) the trucks. They do the heavy lifting, they need processing power, as much as possible.

SJ also said there are no committees at Apple but now there everywhere, including right at the top. It used to be that there was a single owner for every point of technology but not anymore and it is leading to paralysis of procrastination. A shame.

 

[flowrider]

Seriously, not many people in the world wants a tower. Apple has limited resources and instead (rightly so) spend that time creating something beautiful and forward-thinking like a MBP with a touch bar.

You happen to see this:

http://barefeats.com/mac_pro_survey.html

Lou

 

[Peace]

You happen to see this:

http://barefeats.com/mac_pro_survey.html

Lou

" SUMMARY
Based on our survey, the most popular Mac Pro configuration is a Tower with 8 CPU cores, 64GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GPU, two external 4K displays, and 2TB of internal storage. The top three most desired ports are Thunderbolt 3, Ethernet, and USB 3.1 Gen2."

 

[shaunp]

Of course the specs should be updated, a 4 year update cycle is ridiculous. My argument was that sexy sells, so to advocate for a tower design is beyond crazy.

Agreed, sexy does sell to the masses, but the Mac Pro was never intended to be sold to the masses, it's a workhorse. A workhorse doesn't need to be sexy, it needs reliability, scalability and functionality. Looks come after these.

 

[Porco]

Of course the specs should be updated, a 4 year update cycle is ridiculous. My argument was that sexy sells, so to advocate for a tower design is beyond crazy.

What's to say they can't make a 'sexy' tower? What a ridiculous sentence I just typed.

Personally I think the cylinder MP looks great, but I still prefer the looks of the 'cheese-grater' anyway.

 

[shab]

Certainly I'm typing this on a 2009 Mac Pro because of it - how many others are doing the same?

I'm typing on my 4,1 and still waiting for a new tower MP. Also in need of buying 2 MBP's, but not these new toys.
How Apple says they know what we need, is a mystery to me, but nobody can measure the lost sales opportunities!

 

[Chancha]

The core problem is this: there is a clear disjoint between the traditional productivity and workflow centric professionals such as broadcasters or desktop publishers, vs the newer breed of web based content creator crowd. Apple's problem is that they chose to pretty much abundant the former and embrace the latter, without being vocal on the transition.

The FCP7 to FCPX hits pros the most. Many will argue that even after the latest updates, FCPX is still nowhere near the capabilities of FCP7, but then teens or startups whose only intended output destination is Youtube will find FCPX perfectly suffice. In fact its learning curve is much smoother without all the "legacy jargon" getting in the way in the interface.

Similar trend can be seen in Shake, Logic, and Aperture. The current version of Photos has even less features than the very 1st iPhoto version. It is meant to be a photo library manager that even your grandma can use. The issue is that Apple replaces this over Aperture, which at one point rivaled Lightroom even for professional photographers. They would rather upset heavy users who miss features, than hindering lighter users to even grasp what they are doing. Why else do you think they justify putting a forking OLED bar on an MBP, while every single seasoned pros must have learned their trade memorizing hundreds of keyboard shortcuts already.

The irony is that iTunes which was once the cleanest solution for music library management, is nowadays bloated to no end due to iOS ecosphere complexity.

 

[Daniel Reed]

Are there still some goof balls actually buying these things?

I purchased a Mac Pro 6,1 new from Apple directly two weeks ago!

As outdated as the D700s are, they still out perform the best supported nVidia option (titan-x maxwell) in my use. Also, as outdated as the 12-core Xeon E5-2697 v2 is, it still performs extremely well - for what I do anyways. That AND, RAID and outboard rec.2020 video boards over TB2 work as well as needed.

While the D700/1TB/12-core works extremely well, the lower variations perform quite poorly - I'm looking at you D300 and D500!

While I appreciate Apple has silently upgraded the internals since launch (1TB SSD is 50% faster), they really should offer a offer a GPU upgrade program. It's painstaking how gimped the D300 is. And if you end up with a nMP w/ the dreaded D300 or a shoddy D500, all you can do is sell the whole Mac on eBay and buy another one with D700s installed!


Am I extremely pissed Apple has all but divorced itself from the Mac Pro? A Big F'n YES!

As "interesting" as the Mac Pro is, it is a perfect example of Apple's dilemma, especially post Jobs - they refuse to make what "we want" or address "our needs".

All we want/need is another big cheesegrater, w/ dual sockets, plenty of room for full length cards, and tons of internal drives - all running OSX.

Instead Apple gave us a "spaghetti" mess of wires running everywhere, and when the pros complained they couldn't put their expensive PCIe cards in it, they all but buried the Mac Pro - then shuttered the automation "pro" team, eliminated the dedicated OSX team by merging it with the iOS team, and renamed OSX to maxOS.

Courage, truly.

To deal with the problem Apple created, I basically built a "wind tunnel shelf", that hides the entire mess and keeps everything at safe operating temps. (actually got a 5-10% performance increase with the tunnel shelf).

So instead of a brilliant shiny thing of awesome on my desk as Apple engineers foolishly envisioned, my mac pro is completely hidden from view.

Clearly (I say sarcastically), Apple has learned from the trashcan experience. This time they're going to take the best Desktop in the world, paint it black, remove an "i" and add "pro" to the end of it.

 

[chrono1081]

Surely Apple has employees who read these forums... right?? I don't see how there's any way Apple doesn't know what consumers want in their products... So why the heck doesn't Apple just make the products we want already? I'm so sick of Apple ignoring our wants and needs.

This is all I'm asking for:

• A Mac Pro with a tower-like design (similar to the the pre-2013 Mac Pros).
• Up to 128 GB RAM (and user-upgradeable)
• GTX 1080 or Titan Pascal graphics card options
• A non-proprietary SSD, and plenty of room to add my own SSDs later
• PCI-e slots for expandability

THAT'S IT! That's all we want! Just make it happen. It seriously can't be that hard to make a product like this....

In fact, if you're really so adamantly against making the Mac Pro that everyone wants, please let me make it myself. All you need to to is give me permission to install macOS, and give me Nvidia Pascal drivers.

In the meantime, I'm really enjoying my new, custom-built Windows PC. But I'm really, really, really missing macOS. It's so much better than Windows!

[doublepost=1483507264][/doublepost]These forums have zero bearing on what Apple does. If you want to send feedback you HAVE (no exceptions) to go to Apple.com/feedback and provide it there.

Feedback needs to be submitted in an orderly way that is searchable and catalogued.

 

[Chancha]

[doublepost=1483507264][/doublepost]These forums have zero bearing on what Apple does. If you want to send feedback you HAVE (no exceptions) to go to Apple.com/feedback and provide it there.

Feedback needs to be submitted in an orderly way that is searchable and catalogued.

The problem is that Apple, or any consumer product maker, should not require the customers to actively tell them what people like or don't like. Particularly the "pro" segment in question, is a self-explanary crowd that would take active participation to grasp our needs, instead of a few one-way mail-form submissions laid out in polite English.

I mean, let's just twist the topic title a bit by saying "surely Apple has employees who USE their own computers", and by conjecture surely they themselves know very well the limitations of recent Mac lineups to this crowd. This tells me Apple is not unbeknownst to the issues, they just chose a path that no longer serves this crowd.