Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The Mac Pro is here to stay
- Thread starter ActionableMango
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Much of Apple's approach to not talking about future products is to avoid the Osborne effect .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
For the iPhone the impact will probably just be temporary (many users just sat out getting new phones in July/Aug because the new phone was coming and being talked about.).
For the Mac Pro it would be bad. Most likely the vast majority of the product already in the sales channel would stall. Apple would then have to "clean out" that excess at depressed prices later.
P.S. While the Mac Sales are up, the key question is whether the Mac Pro sales are up ( understandably flat due to the delays. ) If Mac Pro sales are shrinking year over year for several quarters in a row then it is in trouble of being axed.
Steve Jobs may have been excessively paranoid about it, but it wasn't entirely without merit.
Definitely a real issue.
But they can't conceal Intel CPU Roadmap information, which MP buyers can use that to get some idea as to potential release dates as well as basic features in the CPU/chipset combinations that would be used.
But if Apple makes a mistake and order too many systems, they won't be able to sell as many off at full MSRP by waiting as they can with devices (where they have a much greater level of control), as those that can wait to upgrade will until the new model releases. Even if they buy the previous model, as they're expecting at least some discount.
This is the worn out, skewed vision of workstation market that is perpetrated on these forums. The workstation market is the market of folks who have workstation (heavy computation and I/O ) like problems to solve. Over time those problems are keeping pace with the improvements in the hardware ( the problems get harder as fidelity , scope, accuracy are increased to meet business needs ).
The "transition" you are talking about above is mostly the fact that lots of folks do not have workloads that are substantially increasing over time. There are some folks using the oldest version of Photoshop possible (and/or older single core , single threaded ) on their Macs. There are others who never needed the "horsepower" of a Mac Pro, but primarily just wanted expandability.
That is not a new transition. The whole PC market largely popped out of folks moving from "mainframes " to "mini computers " to PCs.
ECC is red herring. At this point it is telltale sign of yet another round of "Apple needs to sell a mini tower and cannibalize the iMac. ". ECC really isn't adding anything significant in costs and frankly it has substantial utility if producing the data cost real money or if have a large amount of memory inside of one box. Dropping ECC is the excuse to inject low-midrange i7's into the equation.
Again the hardware shift is not the core issue, it is the static user workload that is the root cause of the shift. Software which can't take advantage of 8+ cores will drift toward boxes that max out at 6 or 8.
When the consumer grade is at 8 the Xeon grade will be at 8+ with also increased cache and I/O to keep 8+ better sustained in data/instructions. The only folks crooning for lower core count will be those whose software is constrained by processor clock and has relatively trivial I/O & cache characteristics . Or silly professional workload metrics like "boot time".
What has been depressing the Mac Pro sales has been "professionals" who moan and groan about single core clock speed much more than lighting a fire under their software vendors to fully leverage the hardware present in the current Mac Pros. The batch-and-multithreaded aware FCPX rewrite was necessary to keep the Mac Pro viable as opposed to the "abandonment" the spinmeisters portray it as. That was/is a transition event.
They don't have to perfectly mask it. I don't think Apple even tries to perfectly conceal the dates (e.g., announcing around the same time every year for the iPods. Sticking to a roughly a 12 month cycle for several products. ) . Additionally, they run controlled leaks to build hype. However, they also have flexibility to move dates around if have stuck a public one out there. For example, a part supplier issue like this one.
Apple does discount sales one day a year. A symbolic Black Friday price drop. I know there are folks who love to haggle but knowing what the price is going to be in advance makes long term budgeting easier.
(if the number they have to get rid of is small enough they can always let them go into the refurb channel. )
Sales are down because it's neglected, and it's neglected because sales are down... It's a terrible cycle, and Apple doesn't seem to acknowledge their half of the problem.
Last edited:
I wasn't trying to imply that they're after total control, but they do like a good deal of it (features, appearance, ... as well as release dates).
As you mention, if they don't post a date until they're actually ready/assured they can meet it, there's no "missed date" for any sort of backlash, as it can mitigate things like the current component availability problem.
In the case of the MP, I was only indicating that Intel's roadmaps can be used to get some idea of dates, and a pretty good idea as to the features (what Intel will provide in the CPU/chipset at least). It's not perfect, as is rather apparent in the case of SB-E5's.
I was talking about a serious error in volume analysis (in terms of a serious over-estimation for order quantity, say on the order of 20+%). Those would end up as Refurbished or sold off to 3rd party retailers. But given the excess quantity, the reduced margin, or worse a loss per unit, could have a noticeable negative impact on the earnings projections (large enough to concern stockholders).
The main areas where core counts matter are for rendering video and CAD / CG. Photoshop, Aperture and most of the other 2D graphical apps don't utilize anything like the horsepower in current Mac Pro's right now. For people using these apps, it's things like memory speed and turbo boost on the Sandy Bridge chips that make the real difference. Single threaded performance improvement is still where the action is for most users, even power users, which is why the i7 iMacs stack up so well against the current Mac Pro's.
I don't think Apple will stop making Mac Pro's if enough people keep buying them but I don't think they have an emotional attachment to the product line either. The Mac Pro is becoming more and more niche IMHO. There's a dangerous combination of the high price (which in fairness is partly down to Intel for server grade CPU's) and the stronger competition coming from Windows based systems running pro apps at a significantly reduced cost, as well as utilizing CUDA & giving users more options for hardware (GPUs, USB 3, Blu Ray). The i7 2600K chip is very over-clockable and ECC RAM is (I believe) non essential for CAD work and video rendering.
I don't think Apple will stop making Mac Pro's if enough people keep buying them but I don't think they have an emotional attachment to the product line either. The Mac Pro is becoming more and more niche IMHO. There's a dangerous combination of the high price (which in fairness is partly down to Intel for server grade CPU's) and the stronger competition coming from Windows based systems running pro apps at a significantly reduced cost, as well as utilizing CUDA & giving users more options for hardware (GPUs, USB 3, Blu Ray). The i7 2600K chip is very over-clockable and ECC RAM is (I believe) non essential for CAD work and video rendering.
That wasn't what I meant to imply. I make my living in iPhone development currently, and you don't see me going for the exit.
However, what I am saying is that Mac growth is reliable. It's a solid foundation. The iPhone? Still a good business, but not as reliable. And longer term, the jury is still out on the iPhone's future given the competitive market.
My point is that if one of your core corporate objectives is to not have sales to then you don't institute a system of recovering from mistakes. Instead, you put a more substantive effort into not making them in the first place. That was one of the things systemically wrong with Apple in the 90's.
They would make the wrong volume call on the "Mac XXXX " and then would have to dump the excess product later. In contrast, the "second coming" Apple almost chronically under delivers (long lines for iPads and iPhones ) then they don't get stuck with excess. Likewise if invest $100K's in sales and supply chain software and data collection then there is no good reason for the forecasts to be significantly off. Baring some hiccup totally out of their control ( flood, earthquake , typhoon , etc. ) impacting demand. To a less extent a competitor coming out of left field ( although not seeing that coming is a something under Apple's control ).
This is yet another reason to axe "single digit and shrinking" products because it is much harder to tell when they are about to fall off a cliff. You don't ride the product over the cliff. Do that too much and it starts to take chunks of the company with it.
Why would sales be down? HP and Dell are in the same boat as Apple. Their workstations are also waiting on new processors from Intel.
If you're a professional who needs a new workstation, it's not like the Mac Pros lack of recent updates is going to make you go elsewhere.
It might make you wait, in which case it's not really a lot sale, it's just a sale that hasn't happened yet, and the bean counters at Apple are smart enough to understand this.
Besides this last two cycles where Intel has been moving the Xeon releases to new time period during the year, where is the evidence of substantial neglect. When there have been socket changes there have been Mac Pro board updates. There have been numerous largely internal tweaks made over the last several releases. Even more substantive changes if go back to the G5 tower era.
I suspect Apple has adjusted the expectations for growth down with this extended delay. However, going back over the last 4-5 years the Mac Pro has gotten an upgrade each year and shown year-over-year improvements in performance.
I was quoting an extreme case. But I thought it has some merit due to the current transitional state of the workstation segment if the person/s doing the volume analysis is/are asleep at the wheel....
I expect they've learned their lesson, but it's *possible* (other reasons too as you mention, but this one is within Apple's control).As per the MP's market either being of a very low growth rate or worse, I completely agree. The smart move under such conditions is to EOL it, and move the R&D funds to another project with a much better ROI, such as some sort of new iGadget.
I mentioned to someone that Apple was still committed to the professional user and had released a completely new version of Final Cut. I was sent the following link in response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxKYuF9pENQ
That wasn't what I meant to imply. I make my living in iPhone development currently, and you don't see me going for the exit.
However, what I am saying is that Mac growth is reliable. It's a solid foundation. The iPhone? Still a good business, but not as reliable. And longer term, the jury is still out on the iPhone's future given the competitive market.
I think you make too much of quarterly reports. First of all, everyone was anticipating iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, so why buy when you can just wait a week or two?
Secondly, had Apple simply sold the iPhone 4S several days earlier it would have been at the end of that quarter instead of the beginning of the next. In which case, iPhone sales would have been UP for the quarter instead of down. That fact that we're talking a few days difference between a down quarter and an up quarter just shows you that the quarterly date is arbitrary.
The current form factor for the Mac Pro is gone. It is truly beautiful industrial design, but it will not return in 2012. What arrives as the next Mac Pro will be rackable using a smaller design. Thermal issues and cooling notwithstanding, the current design is over. <-- forward looking statement, my opinion, not a fact yet.
While a cube is what fascinates Steve Jobs personally since back in the days of the NeXTcube/NeXTdimension, it's just not what they're gonna release.
- It may or may not be called a "Mac Pro" but something that replaces and supersedes both the Mac Pro and Xserve will emerge.
- The current high-end iMacs are really nice machines. They do awesome on geekbench scores. Try running one at 90-100% utilization of all the cores for a few hours each day and then repeat that process. They do not hold up or withstand the heat, there is no professional user I am aware of, certainly none that I work with, who have found even the highest-end iMacs a suitable replacement for Mac Pros when doing heavy lifting.
The iMac is a nice design, but the GPU and cooling for the CPUs are not adequate. Then there's the built-in glossy screen so many people hate, then there is the no expandability without headaches issue. It's a great consumer or prosumer machine. I don't think that anybody working with still images for publication needs a Mac Pro at this stage. You do need one for CPU-intensive tasks.
- The reason there is no new "Mac Pro" (or whatever they rename the new systems to) is because there are no new chips from Intel.
It's not dead yet, and won't be up until such a time that Apple can truly produce a LightPeak/ThunderBolt-based solution that simply let's you plug in more cores, plug in another GPU, plug-in anything_you_want_via_thunderbolt without any slots, order up more cores as a service from their cloud (and have it at least partially, kinda, sorta work, a lot of the time). That time is not right now, ThunderBolt is just getting started, Cores in Cloud is not yet a feasible service..
I give it another 3-5 years. The entire highly-profitable marketplace of iCrap are basically devices to consume content. Somebody, somewhere, still has to produce the content.
The probably meant lower of expected sales of the 4 last quarter, compared to analyst expectations. But yeah, obviously iPhone sales are not down, in any sense of the word. And selling 17million phones in 1 quarter when everyone knows the replacement is around the corner would be mind blowing by any company's standards- except for Apple, who gets punished for these types of figures.
I've no clue what the aggregate numbers would be. When you are hired by Apple as an engineer and actively working on actually writing code, you'll get <whatever is laying around at the moment>, but within 6 months at most (unless you suck and are about to be fired, or working on something not considered "engineering" and writing code), you'll get a new Mac Pro, then a replacement every 3 years or so.
Every Apple engineer I know has multiple Mac Pros, because they tend to pile up as the years pass and Apple usually doesn't request the old machines back. AFAIK these are not official policies, they're just what happens informally. You generally get a new Mac Pro when you are performing at -- or above -- expectations, and bitch about your computer being too slow often enough for somebody to take notice. Internal use of Mac Pros at Apple is very high. I honestly know of nobody who uses Xcode or Eclipse/Java (WebOjects) for a living, who is using anything except a Mac Pro.
So at least at Apple, no, there aren't people sitting around writing iOS apps using iMacs, those tend to land on secretaries desks. The MacBook Pros are much more widely used because they're Good Enough for engineering, and portable. As an engineer you usually wind up with 1 of everything in Apple's lineup (Mac Pro, MBP, MBA, iPads and iPhones are random and depend on supply constraints, when you got the last one, etc), except the iMacs, Apple doesn't give those to engineers unless somebody specifically requests one for some reason.