If Apple wasn't focused on the consumer end of the spectrum it would not show the contempt we have seen so far towards both professional individuals and corporate customers.
Apple isn't so much focused on consumer rather than corporate. They are more focused on the actual device users rather than folks who want to choose and distribute personal computers to users. Sometimes those aren't aligned. The establishment has its own priorities that are not necessarily user priorities.
If Apple still has any large corporate customer, they would need to see a proper roadmap for the product line they intend to invest on rather than relying on internet gossips/blogs and forums like this one...
Lots of very large corps are buying bucketloads of iPhones. ... think they are getting 3-4 briefings on details Apple has nailed down? Nope. Apple's problem right no is for more so lack of 'do' than lack of 'talk'.
P.S. Another gripe I have is Apple thinking that pro users are only photographers and video editors...
That isn't true. It is a mindset that is propagated more so by forums like this one than in reality.
"...we’ve been talking to Mac Pro users – and the rest of the pro users: iMac users, MacBook Pro users. ... A growing group for us is software developers. ... I think if you use Xcode downloads as a metric, it’s possible software developers are actually our largest pro audience. It’s growing very quickly, its been fantastic. ..."
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/06/t...-john-ternus-on-the-state-of-apples-pro-macs/
Apple also knows that there is "pro" software other than there own that covers broader ranges than what Apple covers itself ( writing , diagnostic , etc. ). There is a subset in Video area that has a strategic roadmap mismatch with CUDA focus, but that isn't the entire scope of "pro software" in their scope.
Apple spend more time and resources ( e.g., their "pro focus group") on the intermix of Macs and Logic/FCP because Logic and FCP are their products. If they don't spend time optimizing them who is? That's their responsibility (and revenue source).
The only highly trendy "pro" category that Apple largely avoids is the "pro gamer" folks. There are some "supercomputer" 'pro' stuff they don't particularly cater to either, but the vast amount of the moaning and groan in these forums actually is in the a/v subsection of the pro market.
The flexibility and strength of a UNIX like OS offers incredible opportunities for data science and analysis in pretty much any scientific professional environment where people need more than compromised laptops or all-in-one designs. Linux is great but it requires a lot of fiddling and maintenance.
Being POSIX (UNIX) complaint means there is portability aspects. UNIX isn't particularly essential (strength) to data science. That is just where the 'bigger iron'/'bigger cluster' tools are.
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I keep telling people that they're in love with the thermal core and are way overthinking this thing.
Highly unlikely for the next Mac Pro since they openly named it as a limitation. The GPU and CPU on the iMac Pro are highly decoupled from one another. If they were so manically in love with the concept they would have been liklely to repeat it there. They did not. Haven't on the MBP design updates either. There is exceedingly little evidence to back up this claim.
The overthinking is far more in that widely complex and contrived explanations for the delay. It is extremely likely there is no new Mac Pro probably because they were not substantively working on one. Second, because building an Apple product from scratch takes a time frame on the order of 18-24 months not the 3-8 months ones folks arm flap about. The iPhones ? 18-24. They come every 12 because the process is process is multiple pipelined. The SoCs ... same thing. if Apple halted those to a standstill and then started them back up from scratch ... same 'delay' would ensue.
The Mojave + Metal GPUs in a Mac 5,1 don't generally have boot screens and have limited Windows bootcamp support. Slap something together and ship is viable as a "stopgap"/"life raft" product on the verge of falling into the Obsolete bucket, that isn't going to meet the "new, best ever" product metric for Apple.
There is likely to be some custom aspects to the system but that isn't necessarily overthinking. Simply assuming the same design parameters from similar systems 10 years ago isn't really 'thinking' about them at all.
