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What would you do if apple discontinued the Mac Pro?

Hackintosh

Hey, sorry for the aside -- I'm just trying to get in touch with Tutor -- regarding his killer Hackintosh geekbench scores. I didn't see any PM options on this site. @Tutor: Could you please email me at macrumors [at] zinclabs [dot] com? I would greatly appreciate it!
 
Fesco said:
What would you do if Apple discontinued the Mac Pro?

Would you forsake apple forever and change sides or would you just make do with an iMac? Or get a PC for your workstation needs while purchasing an apple laptop on the side? Or none of the above?
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Hackintosh for desktops, real Apple for Macbooks.

I'd rather stay with Mac Pro proper. The chassis design blows EVERYBODY out of the water...

The iMacs are awesome in theory, but enough incidents of screen burning, overheating, et al, really need to be addressed. Even the 2010 iMacs at school radiate enough heat to feel uncomfortable in front of. :(
 
xlii said:
Why would Apple abandon the Mac Pro line? They won't unless it no longer is making a profit for them.
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How many times will people repeat this absolute drivel!?!?!?

We mortals might never do such a thing...why pass up a buck right? But we aren't Apple!!!!

Apple kills profitable products or would-be potential products (in their labs) every week of the year. Jobs and his gang pass up on brilliant, brain-dead profit-making proposals that get presented in meetings nearly every day of the week.

How interested is Apple in a profitable corner market they could easily acquire...or in a multi-million dollar ice cream operation that could turn 200mil per year? That's nothing to them. Nothing! And it would diffuse their focus.

Apple could buy up big, strategic companies by the bushel, and double the value of whatever they bought. But Jobs knows that smaller incremental profits aren't worth it! Skate to where the puck WILL BE. Embrace the new. Burn bridges to legacy products...even if it seems like the cookies have just begun to to cool.

Apple just killed the MacBook. Did they need to? Wasn't the MacBook profitable?

Apple is the company Sony would have been were it emerging in 2010. That's the best comp.

Even big companies need a razor-sharp blade at the tip of their arrow. In fact the biggest companies need it more than anyone.

MEMORIZE THIS FACT: Apple will kill, scuttle, or re-invent ANY profitable or successful product...Why? To stay focused. Simplify. Transform a narrow-market product into a mass-market product.

And it's a great lesson for all of us. Simplify. Focus. Attack. Refine. Narrow. Reinvent.

Apple only wants products that fit their central business objectives, which are, STATED BY APPLE:
- Consumer friendly/Easy to use/Minimalistic
- Mobile
- Can be produced in mass quantity (millions at least)
- Leverage content channels like iTunes/iStore


As for what I will do WHEN Apple kills the Mac Pro:
-Not cry, whine, rage or be surprised
-Buy a fully powered PC
-Bite it and learn what I need to learn (I've had some PC's so I have a little practice)
-Enjoy the greater user control, affordability, product options
-Occasionally miss my Mac Pro days
 
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xlii said:
Why would Apple abandon the Mac Pro line? They won't unless it no longer is making a profit for them.
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I'm sure the Xserve wan't making much profit for them either. Possibly because they lagged so far behind in hardware updates. Refreshing the Xserve twice a year or even solidly once a year, with a good amount of marketing to the enterprise, I'm sure it would have been more popular, and brought Apple more money.
 
snberk103 said:
I'd buy a big honking Mac Pro off of the refurb store. Something much bigger than I currently need, with the intention of keeping it running and current for 5 years. My 2008 Octo core MP is pushing 3 years, and has least 1 or 2 years of life in it.... at least.
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This is a telling post. This poster..and many like him are declaring that they don't need any more CPU than exists now in 2011.

If such is the case...the MP is certainly dead soon.

Why should snberk103 pay more than 2,500 dollars?. A refurb is good. A good reasonable value. Sounds a lot like a used Mac Pro guy...or one who'd happily jump at a sexed up 2012 iMac.

The market for a geeked up mpro shrinks by the day.
 
I'd do three things.

1) Keep using my 2010 Mac Pro until it was no longer viable.

2) Appreciate my Linux Machine even more.

3) Celebrate that I'm not married to any platform.

My personal happiness has nothing to do with the tools of my trade.
 
IceMacMac said:
This is a telling post. This poster..and many like him are declaring that they don't need any more CPU than exists now in 2011.

If such is the case...the MP is certainly dead soon.

Why should snberk103 pay more than 2,500 dollars?. A refurb is good. A good reasonable value. Sounds a lot like a used Mac Pro guy...or one who'd happily jump at a sexed up 2012 iMac.

The market for a geeked up mpro shrinks by the day.
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You're right - I don't need faster CPUs (but I don't do video work - just still photography). Heck, I don't know that I need more than 8 CPUs either....

What I want is lots of storage - internal preferably - and RAM. I also like the dual ethernet ports - something I've not read mentioned in this thread before (though I may have missed it).

Absolutely I would get a refurb, if possible. But the selection of refurbed Mac Pros is not always that extensive. But if a year-old but well discounted Mac Pro was available when I needed it.... I'd have no problems buying it.

If I needed to move to a non-Mac Pro system..... that's a tough one. I would 90% for sure stay with Apple. I like the way the OS X works, and even if a PC computer may be faster - I believe a non-OS X OS would slow me down.

I'd probably go with one of the i7 27" iMacs with fully loaded RAM, and attach lots of TB storage.

It'll be interesting to see what Apple does in the next year.
 
Tutor said:
Just look again.
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PMs are disabled for some reason...says I don't have access.
I was hoping to get a "shopping list" from you. I haven't found any "successful" dual-CPU build lists anywhere.
Thanks!
 
IceMacMac said:
MEMORIZE THIS FACT: Apple will kill, scuttle, or re-invent ANY profitable or successful product...Why? To stay focused. Simplify. Transform a narrow-market product into a mass-market product.

And it's a great lesson for all of us. Simplify. Focus. Attack. Refine. Narrow. Reinvent.
Click to expand...

If they go too far, they WILL lose customers.

Mass markets are good only if you find a way to keep them after you capture them. Nor are they the definition of "freedom". Mass-marketed products are often watered down, or sell less as being more. For its day, the Commodore 64 may have been a mass market success, but the Atari 800XL was a more capable computer.

Make it too simple and people will say it's designed for people who can't think, or the people will be pointed at and called "dumb". Hmmm...

With iMac screen yellowing and burn-in problems, overheating Macbooks, etc, I will argue against "quality" and call it what it is: "perceived quality".




As for what I will do WHEN Apple kills the Mac Pro:
-Not cry, whine, rage or be surprised
-Buy a fully powered PC
-Bite it and learn what I need to learn (I've had some PC's so I have a little practice)
-Enjoy the greater user control, affordability, product options
-Occasionally miss my Mac Pro days
Click to expand...


I'd hate going back to Windows (the registry sucks) but, sigh, maybe...
 
thermodynamic said:
I'd hate going back to Windows (the registry sucks) but, sigh, maybe...
Click to expand...

I use a Windows 7 VM as a hosting environment for web development (ColdFusion, SQL Server, etc.), and besides the sucky font rendering (which I pretty much cured with gdipp) and clunky installation/uninstallation process, it's a pretty stable and capable OS and a long way from the Windows 2000 machine I switched from about 5 years ago.

But every time I consider switching back, I realize that I've really come to enjoy the superior experience provided not only by OS X, but by the quality of the Mac Pro hardware and the collection of amazing apps I rely upon to get my work done. Coda, Transmit, Cornerstone, Acorn, Pixelmator...would I be able to rebuild the same workflow with comparable apps on Windows? Of course. Would they feel as polished and be as easy to use? Doubtful.

Mac developers care about aesthetics and usability in a way that's unique among application developers. That's what keeps me coming back. Unfortunately, being forced to an iMac form factor with poor expandability, no matte screen option, and numerous QC issues would be enough to drive me away.
 
xlii said:
Why would Apple abandon the Mac Pro line? They won't unless it no longer is making a profit for them.
Click to expand...

They abandon the MacBook, i recall a similar thread saying no they would never stop that, it the top selling mac in the apple store etc, now gone!

They abandoned the Professional Video Editing Market by replacing final cut with a souped up version of iMovie no matter what people say it not a app aimed a profesional video editors,

They abandoned the xserve , we got a lot of them at work what happen if one dies? we can't cram a mac pro in to a 1 u space!

All apple care about if the iPad & iPhone not the pro users.!!!
 
With that much corporate power they can do what they (Steve) likes whether it makes sense (or is fair) or not...
 
Flash SWT said:
"Is the Mac Pro dead?"
http://www.cringely.com/2011/08/is-the-mac-pro-dead/

.
Click to expand...

Sounds like he's been reading this thread, several people here suggested just the same thing.

As was pointed out though, even Thunderbolt might not be fast enough for some high-bandwidth applications; unless you went with some ungainly multi connection (i.e. more than one Thunderbolt connection between two boxes, for 4+ channels)
 
I seriously hope they don't I'm saving up for one in 2013, if they do discontinue it, as much as hate saying this, I'll buy a workstation pc.
 
Really, after all these posts regarding what would we do if Apple discontinued the Mac Pro I have the same answer. I wouldn't buy another one (of the no longer available Mac Pros). That'll show 'em!
 
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