All this cpu talk is good but Apple also suprised us with the nMp by completely redesigning and trying to innovate. For me it is innovation in the wrong direction for a pro device. Sure it looks good but it took all the functionality. I think Apple is trying to innovate or EOL their products. If they only bump cpu specs and ports they will not be very different from windows boxes where specs and muscles are racing. And they won't have shiny new products to put on stage.
It also happened in phone world. Apple resisted altering phone sizes for long time. They focused on perfecting ios. Then they enetered the size and spec race area and crippled the software (my opinion). Since then all the people i know, cannot see a reason to upgrade so soon. Now they are braking macOS in my opinion. It is becoming more like a device to support/backup your mobile gadgets.
I am not very optimistic for new updates, thats why i chose to go h@ck way. I am happy with it and watching what will happen next with a popocorn in my hand. If apple surprise us i can choose to go back and buy one.
I think their market research showed demand in the far east for the bigger iPhone models. And subsequent sales shows that to be accurate. The SE shows that there's still a demand for physically smaller pocketable models despite Apple treating it like the budget model in the range and delaying launch till March so that it doesn't put supply constraints on A9 chips going into the bigger iPhones (see below for iPad comparison).
Well since we're on the new Mac Pro, I'll link my own post in a
different thread about what I think. In conclusion, however, Phil Schiller said that the new Mac Pro was a device for 10 years. Not updating it in 3 years is bad, especially when Intel have said that
Skylake was not a stonewall pre-requisite for USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 since the Alpine Ridge chip came out.
That's an old link but the TLDR version from that article is "Intel is making it clear that at a technical level Skylake and Thunderbolt 3 are not interconnected, and that it would be possible to pair Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controllers with other devices, be it Broadwell, Haswell-E, or other products."
In other words, Intel have just released
Broadwell-EP or Xeon E5v4. Apple could well be engineering a replacement model Mac Pro that they can add Alpine Ridge controllers to with the right motherboard. And due to the power and heat profile of the new Mac Pro case a pair of AMD RX480 GPUs might be the correct GPUs to use despite the high performance Vega GPUs being on the horizon in H1 2017. Apple would probably be looking at the
Radeon Pro WX series for Polaris based workstation graphics. The WX7100 appears to be a Firepro version of the consumer RX480. The WX 4100 may well be used as the entry level GPU.
In the mean time on the existing new Mac Pro, the very least they could have done was cut the price to bump the spec (e.g. RAM) of the existing model to show buyers there was an effort being made. Yes, they have the refurb store that cuts prices by 15% and some of these look so good that they might be brand new models just moved from the retail box into the anonymous brown boxes to secure a sale (like a pre-registered car).
For what it's worth Apple's phone market is the lion's share of revenue and they can't get it wrong. People expect and demand an update annually so Apple have to comply regardless. iPads have been slipping recently, with an 18 month gap for the iPad Air 2 before we had the launch of the iPad Pro in March of this year. The sales figures for iPads are flat with only all-new models like the smaller Pro getting attention.
We also see rumours of a
third model size: 10.5" joining the range. My question about that is will it be a March launch or an October launch? The iPad range has been price/storage bumped so I wouldn't be surprised to see a March launch for the supposed 10." which John Gruber suggests
may be a different aspect ratio. And there is a subsequent Twitter conversation discussing thinner bezels, possibly with 16:9 aspect ratio like a giant iPhone with the iPhone DPI.
Bringing this back on topic (Mac Mini), the rationale for staggering the launch of the iPad Pro 9.7" (and iPhone SE) for me was to:
1. Stagger demand for the A9 CPU because the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus was always going to struggle for early supply until early the following year.
2. Put some revenue into a different quarter for Apple.
Similarly, the Mac Mini could follow the same idea but I don't think Apple would have supply chain problems obtaining enough Skylake CPUs for the niche Mac Mini (or even Kaby Lake come to think of it, I don't recall articles about Macbook Airs being low on stock on launch due to CPU supply, not that Apple would be that bothered!).
In either event, though, delaying the Mac Mini 6 months on from October is a bit silly because the U series Kaby Lake 28w Iris Graphics parts could become available and Apple would have already used Skylake 28w parts in a supposed update of the Macbook Pro 13" which the Mini traditionally raids for parts.
