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theory regarding Mac Pro delay

I will be the first to admit I know nothing about nothing here, but wonder if Apple's shift to focus on standard retail market principles, and not tech market principles may play a larger part than we would want. Refresh cycles around back to school, xmas, etc. are defining product hardware releases more than OS, tech availability (intel release notwithstanding), and pro-use....comments?

Having said that, I am anxiously awaiting next release with cash in hand...pent up demand in our household has me unconfident in any purchase beyond iPad3...wait, maybe that is their plan! I hate being a pawn....
 
8CoreWhore said:
No rush for Apple in part because those with 12 cores won't be upgrading for quite a while, and those with less cores have the 12 core to move to.

Most customers are probably covered with the current line-up.

Then, naturally Apple would wait for Ivy Bridge... and need time to design around it, test it, etc. Then announce this summer.

I think Mountain Lion is important for it - so, this summer boys.

:p
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Perhaps, but it's been. 1 3/4 years since last mac pro update, they should have dropped prices on the computers.

Hope they come out with new equivalent soon. Also it looks like entirely lineup may have touchscreen capability with mountain lion os x. So all macs will get an update.

Gonna be an interesting summer. But no one thinks apple is a good communicator on issue, Regarding mac pro's they have stunk
 
There was a rumor this morning about a June Mountain Lion release. If true, they might as well just wait and release all the Macs then I suppose. They sure don't seem in any sort of rush otherwise for any of the new lines.
 
xgman said:
There was a rumor this morning about a June Mountain Lion release. If true, they might as well just wait and release all the Macs then I suppose. They sure don't seem in any sort of rush otherwise for any of the new lines.
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Tim Cook has usually been a much better master of the news cycle than that, though. Why would he pile all the news into a single shot so it can appear and then disappear when instead he could stagger the refreshes and new software so that Apple is the lead story in tech every Tuesday from now until a month after WWDC?

Think about last summer and how it went. New MBPs and iMacs. Then iCloud and iTunes Match. Then Lion. Then Sandy Bridge Airs and Minis. Then new Time Capsules. And by then we got into the pre-iPhone-4S groove (with everyone calling it the iPhone 5 of course) and awaited the new phone and iOS 5 less than a couple of months later. THAT is how Apple does it. Refreshing the entire rack of Macs all at once? It's just not their way. Or, at least, it hasn't been before.

That said, nothing guarantees we'll see any refreshes BEFORE WWDC, and our only basis to speculate that there will be, is that Apple isn't likely to leave their biggest annual gathering of professional evangels discussing last year's hardware in the same room together. Or so we think. Apple, like honey badger, does what it wants.
 
Mike Valmike said:
Tim Cook has usually been a much better master of the news cycle than that, though. Why would he pile all the news into a single shot so it can appear and then disappear when instead he could stagger the refreshes and new software so that Apple is the lead story in tech every Tuesday from now until a month after WWDC?

Think about last summer and how it went. New MBPs and iMacs. Then iCloud and iTunes Match. Then Lion. Then Sandy Bridge Airs and Minis. Then new Time Capsules. And by then we got into the pre-iPhone-4S groove (with everyone calling it the iPhone 5 of course) and awaited the new phone and iOS 5 less than a couple of months later. THAT is how Apple does it. Refreshing the entire rack of Macs all at once? It's just not their way. Or, at least, it hasn't been before.

That said, nothing guarantees we'll see any refreshes BEFORE WWDC, and our only basis to speculate that there will be, is that Apple isn't likely to leave their biggest annual gathering of professional evangels discussing last year's hardware in the same room together. Or so we think. Apple, like honey badger, does what it wants.
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24Frames said:
There is also the matter of logistics. They have to make the hardware and fly it to where it is sold. There is a limit to how many products can be updated at once. Staggered launches are much easier to manage.

At present every plane from China is full of iPads!
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/05/08/new-ipad-coming-to-30-additional-countries-including-brazil-on-may-11-and-12/

It looks like they are trying to get the iPad rollout out the way before beginning the Mac updates.
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These points are true the logistics to simultaneously relaunch the entire Mac Lineup would spin your head right off your shoulders -- the UPS reps would be throwing up their breakfast post Monday morning meeting lol
 
I think you guys underestimate the power Apple has. I agree it is odd they have yet to stagger the releases, but the more time that goes by, the more it could happen. Then again, maybe the Mac Pro is slated for August for all we know. The whole thing really feels odd this time around to me.
 
well... it would appear that my theory might be on target

it looks like Apple did wait to update their entire product line all at once.

:p
 
xgman said:
I think you guys underestimate the power Apple has. I agree it is odd they have yet to stagger the releases, but the more time that goes by, the more it could happen. Then again, maybe the Mac Pro is slated for August for all we know. The whole thing really feels odd this time around to me.
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It's odd because you were expecting something else :)

After 6 years of this it doesn't seem odd to me in the slightest. For me it was always going to come when Sandy Bridge-EP was available, it's been launched but that doesn't mean it is available.

We have obvious issues with supplying CPU/chipsets by Intel - see other vendor behaviour compared to the past.

We know Apple aren't forced to rush out a product as while they compete for your dollar they don't compete in the Mac market as they own it.

We know they like to have a smooth launch with product available as soon as it is announced, rarely has it been otherwise.

We know the Mac Pro is a niche item and that in 2010 they made no rush to update it.

We know Apple are responsible for their own OS and driver support. Yet the consumer always expect that new hardware just works magically without knowing how long Apple have to work with hardware. Not saying that is the issue this time, but it is another variable.

It is also possible Apple have waited to get better prices on limited components, we never really hear about the contract side of component supply to major vendors.


Only time you should be concerned now is if other Macs launch and the Mac Pro isn't mentioned.
 
chewky said:
it looks like Apple did wait to update their entire product line all at once.

:p
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It looks far more like more and more rumor sites are "predicting" that Apple will launch as many Macs as possible in the off chance that they will hit the broad side of barn with the "shotgun blast". If there 5 Mac product lines just predict them all and if Apple does even one then they have "hit" something.

Apple waited in large part because Intel , Nvidia, and AMD weren't shipping. Dell's got shipping dates in July... Apple made them wait too?


It isn't just the Xeon's. Intel didn't even "officially" launch the dual core Ivy Bridge Core i models until last Friday. So the mini and MBA couldn't go anyway. (Nevermind, they had until July for a 'due date' ). If the gap because "officially" launch and really shipping in multiple vendors boxes is just as long as it has been the for Xeon then the Mini/MBA wouldn't show up until at least August.

I think it is far more likely that the rumor sites are setting the Mac rumor consumers up for a huge expectation failure. WWDC will come and Apple will not spend 75% of the time talking about Macs and there will be much disappointment to go around.

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Umbongo said:
Only time you should be concerned now is if other Macs launch and the Mac Pro isn't mentioned.
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If the other Macs launch over a series of months in small bundles ... then no. Similarly, Apple isn't likely to launch much of anything Mac 3-4 weeks before the next OS X major version ships.

Concern would only be if there is a several month gap after one or both of those.

Yet another reason not to do "big bang" dog and pony shows for the line up. Folks will read into anything that doesn't quite make the show as being doomed. It is far, far better to incrementally release the models over time. There is always going to be "why did they get to first" moaners out there because their favorite model didn't go before the others. It is folly to bundle everything into one big drop just to keep them all quiet.
 
If the Mac Pro gets left out of this, there are going to be some pretty unhappy campers here.
 
Mike Valmike said:
Tim Cook has usually been a much better master of the news cycle than that, though. Why would he pile all the news into a single shot
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deconstruct60 said:
it doesn't really make sense to wait to release them all at WWDC. [...] Unless some specific Mac was critical for a ML feature demo there isn't good reason to wait. [...] There is no big win and piling all of the Mac models into one big dog and pony show.
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The one reason for this move that i could imagine is some kind of paradigm shift affecting all computer models of Apple, being so elementary that Apple accepts all the drawbacks and negative effects of such a move (i.e. refreshing the majority or even all of their computer portfolio at the same time with all the logistic and marketing nightmares involved).

I fail, however, to imagine exactly _what_ could be both that elementary and at the same time affect both mobile and desktop machines...
 
It's pretty clear the Mac Pro line is DONE. 2 years since the last update. Ridiculous. Apple is not in the "pro" creative market anymore fellas. It's in the mass consumer market. Just suck it up and move on.
 
Razeus said:
It's pretty clear the Mac Pro line is DONE. 2 years since the last update. Ridiculous. Apple is not in the "pro" creative market anymore fellas. It's in the mass consumer market. Just suck it up and move on.
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Sandy Bridge-EP is the only major update available since the introduction of the Mac Pro and was originally slated for around a year after the 2010 Mac Pro launch. It isn't clear that it is "DONE" at all.
 
Neodym said:
T that Apple accepts all the drawbacks and negative effects of such a move (i.e. refreshing the majority or even all of their computer portfolio at the same time with all the logistic and marketing nightmares involved).
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I think Apple has the wherewithal to handle it just fine.

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Umbongo said:
It isn't clear that it is "DONE" at all.
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Unless, it doesn't get any mention or update at all at wwdc or right after. Then it's looking real bad..........
 
Umbongo said:
Sandy Bridge-EP is the only major update available since the introduction of the Mac Pro and was originally slated for around a year after the 2010 Mac Pro launch. It isn't clear that it is "DONE" at all.
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After two years and no update, you're still not getting the picture? After the Final cut fiasco, you're still having faith? Still no update to Aperture and you still haven't moved on to Lightroom?

If there was AT LEAST a spec bump in the last year, I'd give you some merit. But it's been 2 years. In the world of computing technology, that's a really long time.

The writing is on the wall.

Apple is done with the "pro" market.
 
Razeus said:
After two years and no update, you're still not getting the picture? After the Final cut fiasco, you're still having faith? Still no update to Aperture and you still haven't moved on to Lightroom?

If there was AT LEAST a spec bump in the last year, I'd give you some merit. But it's been 2 years. In the world of computing technology, that's a really long time.

The writing is on the wall.

Apple is done with the "pro" market.
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Oh, the melodrama!!! Will we ever survive?!!

It's not a matter of faith. It's a matter of there being no new CPUs available until just now. Yes, a spec bump would have been nice. (That 3GB of RAM figure, irrelevant as it is since we all upgrade the RAM aftermarket anyway, is especially incongruous at a glance.) But a substantial upgrade wasn't going to happen without new CPUs anyway. Well, now we have them. Apple has one chance to make good on the Pro and that's announcing SOMETHING (even if it's a "stay tuned this summer") on the Mac Pro at WWDC. If we get a big wall of silence on the matter, then will I adopt your rationale that the Mac Pro is headed out to pasture. Because a business has to make decisions based on the information it has, and Apple's window of opportunity to add to that information for this buying cycle will have elapsed.

I said it before in this very thread: Apple, like honey badger, does what it wants. Sometimes that makes things difficult for non-consumer buyers. In at least that respect, yes, Apple has swayed too far to a consumer orientation. But once we have our new hardware in hand, we won't give a damn about that for another 3/4/etc years until the next upgrade.
 
Razeus said:
Apple is done with the "pro" market.
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...which is why they wrote FCPX? If Apple didn't want to deal with pros anymore, they wouldn't have done FCPX in the first place. They just would have dropped FCP or let it die slowly.
 
goMac said:
...which is why they wrote FCPX? If Apple didn't want to deal with pros anymore, they wouldn't have done FCPX in the first place. They just would have dropped FCP or let it die slowly.
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...they shouldn't have had to re-write it to begin with. It should have been good to go from jump. Instead they botched it.
 
chewky said:
The fact that Apple is considering dropping the 17" MacBook Pro is also indicative that they're working on streamlining their product line to create a strong 'family' of computers. This just makes a lot of sense to me. What do you think?
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I think it's absurd, grotesque and insane.

I give it a 50/50 chance. :apple:

Btw, what is a 'strong family' of computers?
Two or three models with almost no options?
 
Razeus said:
...they shouldn't have had to re-write it to begin with. It should have been good to go from jump. Instead they botched it.
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Final Cut was written in 32 bit Carbon. 64 bit requires Cocoa. Carbon and Cocoa are nothing alike and require rewriting. QuickTime doesn't even exist in 64 bit.

So yes, they had to rewrite it or stay in 32 bit.
 
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