I agree with the sentiment, but how naïve must one be to believe a single word they say about commitment the day they present the damn thing, hopefully sometime in the first half of the century.
If I recall correctly, when Phil Schiller’s ass innovated the thing on stage, he said that was the mac pro for the next ten years. Unless he was literally meaning it (he’s past halfway the decade now, so he’s 60% right) we were supposed to understand that they were going to update the model periodically.
What is actually said paraphrases as "what is a new possible form factor for the next 10 years" . Not 100% those specific dimensions, but breaking out of the "basically same external form factor with innards arranged basically the same way".
There wasn't much of any explicit or implicit promise of upgrade periodicity at all. One aspect that they do hit on in the presentation that OpenCL was the future ( "You should be using OpenCL"). Also PCI-e SSD flash is the "future" of workstation storage.
The larger point was putting the "old" Mac Pro power into much lower amount of volume. That general aspect they have weaved into the iMac Pro. Swapped embedded display for Thermal core but also a "new format" for the category. Still didn't backtrack from the SSD only internal storage.
We all know what happened. Even more, in the presentation there was even a slide of a photographer taking advantage of the architecture of the tcMP on a “brand new version of Aperture”. We all know what happened.
No. At the above video's 5:00-6:00 mark talks about 4K display and new version of Final Cut Pro X. "You can be this guy" was a 3 4K screen FCPX set up. Not Aperture. FCPX is still quite healthily getting updates at this point in time. That is what happened.
Two major things tripped up Apple's next 10 year forecast. First, OpenCL which mutated into Metal from Apple's perspective. The Mac Pro 2013 'bet the farm" on OpenCL and Apple largely changed "horses" to the 'future' about a year or so later.
Second, and coupled to that was TDP trend of GPUs ramping way past most workstation CPUs. ( And AMD's rosey future path getting bogged down in a fab and design process swamp where throwing extra power at the problem was the short/intermediate "work around". ) If something like AMD Polaris had shipped 1-2 years earlier than it did the current Mac pro might have seen an update (to at least ride out he gap a bit longer) . It didn't so no update.
As far as Aperture ... that more so got dropped for the order of magnitude number higher photographers on iOS devices. Apple went with where the photographers were growing. The advanced software augments to pictures features were pushed into the "cameras' and far more got on the Metal (and custom silicon ) track quicker.
A couple of years ago, during the first Schillerfest, they said they were committed to making the greatest mac pro we could even dream of. More than two years later all we have is a rumour of maybe some words during wwdc.
Again no. Apple never said anything about "could even dream of".
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/06/t...-john-ternus-on-the-state-of-apples-pro-macs/
The only mention of root word "dream" was by a reporter in reference to the MP 2013 design; not Apple.
".. what was the moment you came to the realization that the Mac Pro that you had dreamed was not this design? ..."
Federighi said the following.
"...We need an architecture that can deliver across a wide dynamic range of performance and that we can efficiently keep it up to date with the best technologies over years. ..."
Schiller said the following
"... and we want to architect it so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we’re committed to making it our highest-end, high throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers. ..."
Generally Apple has said stuff along the lines of more performance/bandwidth than other (and/or previous) Mac system. Apple isn't making statements about faster than anything anybody can conceive of. The "our highest-end" is far more of a relative notion of "highest" than some kind of overall market global max/highest.
Schiller also said the following:
"... Well, you know that we’ve always tried to strike that balance between meeting as large a group of users’ needs as possible, while making the fewest number of products that enable that. So we can put energy into making them really great. Great performance, great quality, great innovative features. If you dilute too far, those become counterproductive with each other. ..."
Apple isn't going to make everything for everybody. The Mini, iMac , and iMac Pro don't cover all possible desktop users. It also isn't likely that the next Mac Pro's objective is to cover 'everyone else'. Some subset of that "rest of the market" that is big enough to be a viable product. Apple's objective also isn't out to chase the smallest, most elitist, niche(s). Smallest isn't an objective. Going too deep on Ultra , Super duper maximum of maximum performance is a smaller and smaller market. That isn't the primary balanced objective. That is the "counterproductive" alluded to above.
That and a bunch of people over the internet stacking things like crazy claiming that’s the new mac pro we’re getting, since that’s the more popular interpretation of Phil’s “modular” reference.
It isn't the "more popular interpretation". Far more so it is the more controversial one which in turn generates more clicks/page views which generation more ads revenue. It is the view that generates more money for mac "news" websites.
So, apple has to commit to updating the mac pro, all right, but apple’s statements of commitment are worth nothing. If we see them updating the model several times during the first years, then they may get some credibility back.
That kind of expectation setting on rate is misguided. The underlying components aren't going to update that fast. The iteration rate is probably going to be greater than 12 months even if their are committed. If the GPUs are basically made by Apple then maybe it will get incremental coverage updates on a shorter cycle. (.e.g. Apple covers 2 "cards" performance levels at first. Adds a 3rd 6-7 months down the road. And then does subsystem updates on a less than 12 month cyclee then on). That would actually help with their "have to do something to say something" problem about strictly not speaking about future products.
But overall, major upgrade covering multiple subsystems.... the components don't iterate that much. So pragmatically hard for the overall system to.
What Apple needs is more external evidence that a substantively sized team is assignedd almost fully keeping the Mac Pro moving forward. That isn't a "hobby project" product or a Rip van Winkle project that they work on in some kind of bust mode every half decade or so.
