I'm not suggesting anything. Just offering what I thought I heard of how it would work.
I would build a hackintosh or go to windows before I would want to scatter my work all over the net.
But thats just me.
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Why Apple Are In No Hurry To Build A New Mac Pro
- Thread starter dexum175
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I'm not suggesting anything. Just offering what I thought I heard of how it would work.
I would build a hackintosh or go to windows before I would want to scatter my work all over the net.
But thats just me.
What is lacking is credible quantitative evidence to back up this often cited, largely narcissistic hypothesis. The Mac platform credibly existed for years before the Mac II came along. The notion that the "few" carried the whole Mac Platform is largely self indulgent hand waving. There was significant impact within respective subsegment.
There is no evidence that what Apple is doing now is largely any different than what Jobs was doing. The only significant change is that Apple is hoarding somewhat less cash now than when Jobs was running the show. I'd bet Jobs never would have signed off on these dividend increases.
The current stark lack of progress in Mac Pro development is deeply seeded in moves that Jobs made in 2009-2011. It is extremely unlikely that Mac Pro R&D was either stopped or chronically underfunded without Steve Jobs' approval. The whole notion of "if Steve was here this never would have happened" is delusional. Steve Jobs played a significant role putting the Mac Pro in the position it is in now.
Tim Cook was in charge of overseeing the overall Mac business so he isn't totally out of the web of influence here but Jobs had a chokehold on all products.
Never going to happen. Frankly it is also myopic not to look at the iOS products as computers. They are. Apple dropped "computer" because the myopic notion is to map "computer" onto a vintage IBM PC or Apple II box physical entity. That's close minded. Apple is still very much in the computer business. What they are not fixated on is any one form factor or any one instantiation of their core OS infrastructure.
Never going to happen though as long as iOS and OS X share common infrastructure. OS X can't be effectively decoupled from the Mac hardware and OS X can't effectively be decoupled from iOS. So there is no "spin out" coming ever unless Apple's corporate strategy is completely reversed.
Given the current strategy put $100B in the bank, that isn't likely. Might as well wait for a meteor to bulleye's Apple HQ and wipe out the executive staff at the weekly staff meeting. That is about as likely.
This is a ghetto that is actually not doing the Mac Pro any favors. The notion that the Mac Pro is primarily good for two propriteary software titles.
First, those two titles work just fine on other Macs. It is almost suicidal to construct an OS X software title that primarily depends upon one (and only one) Mac model. The Mac market is a single digit fraction of the overall personal computer market. Any one Mac model is a relatively small fraction of that single digit fraction. It is even worse for the Mac Pro since it too is in the single digits. Multiply two single digits and you're likely in the sub single digit territory. A segment so small that it is high prone to death spiral pricing and almost guaranteed low growth. Both of those are death sentences as an Apple product because they are in 180 degree opposition to Apple's general goals for products.
This is not what the "Mac vs PC" campaign was about. The notion of "you can buy something similar to what cool pros buy" is far closer to what was being pitched while the Mac market share was declining , not getting larger. That sales pitch wasn't a masterstroke of anything.
The "Mac vs PC" campaign was more about "tools that just work" ( which has been a reoccuring theme since the Mac was introduced. ). It also was highly leverage more on making fun of how badly Microsoft was shooting themselves in the foot more so than properties of a Mac. That why the campaign essentially died after Microsoft started to correct for Windows Vista.
Hardly. Making fun of other folks stumbles doesn't have long term legs if they correct for their mistakes.
Much of Apple's marketing for the Mac these days is done through retail Apple stores. Apple directly exposes potential customers to Macs and they make up their own minds whether they want to buy a Mac or not. That has actually been far more successful than any of this gimmicky ad campaigns or evangelist/fanboy concocted 'missions'.
The mission is to sell computer systems that significantly increasing numbers of people want to buy. Secondly, to put better solutions into the hands of more people at more affordable pricing (e.g., take $8,000+ solution systems and make them $2,000 solution systems. )
The mission never was to selling into some relatively statically populated niche.
The Mac Pro didn't get priority from 2009-2011 not because the iOS stole Apple's focus. The primary problem is that it was a shrinking sub-market. "no or very low" growth means low (or no) Apple interest.
I don't know if I buy that the pro market is shrinking. What exactly are pros jumping ship to?
I think that this is the most cogent reason why the PC market has taken such a downturn and Apple has been slow with the Mac Pro, the demand just isn't there. The economy has been soft for a very long time and so long as software does not make the best use of the available computer processing power, companies don't see the need to replace existing hardware, so long as they are getting reasonable productivity from the existing equipment.
Granted that we all think that Apple may be missing the boat by not forcing industry change as it has done with iDevices, but even Apple is questioning the need for high powered desktops with its march to cloud computing, so it has not thrown resources into development of a new Mac Pro, but just let a small group work at its own pace, which probably has gotten overtaken a couple of times by changes in hardware, Thunderbolt, newer Intel processors, that has caused them to redo design decisions and delayed introduction.
For me, bottomline, I would rather have a a flexible platform that will last for years, as I have with my 3,1, than a machine that may be a victim of fashion, such as an iMac, so I can wait and hope that the new Mac Pro turns out to be something wonderful, but then that's the nature of trust. For all everyone complains about the delay, I think that the reality is that the Mac Pro remains a workhorse that will continue have one of the longest useful lives of a desktop in the industry.
Even if all Mac Pro users from n - 4 years all buy on a 4 year cycle that is zero long term growth. Replacements of current models isn't going to be a significant growth driver. The market will evidence shrinking trends if folks shift from a 3-4 to 5-6 year cycle. They don't have to "jump ship". Merely remaining seated in the same deck chair leads to shrinking growth.
As to market shrinking...
this looks positive ...
"... reports that workstation vendors shipped about 932 thousand branded workstations, representing an increase of 5.5% over Q2'12. Especially considering that third quarter shipments often take a dip after Q2, that otherwise modest 5.5% figure is a sight for sore OEMs' eyes. ... "
http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/the-workstation-market-finds-its-groove-in-q312/
until look at quarter before...
" ... , reports that around 883 thousand workstations shipped worldwide in the quarter, down 3.8% from the quarter prior and 2.6% from Q2'11. ..."
http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...-sluggish-in-q212-reports-jon-peddie-researc/
or the one before that....
"... reports that around 918.4 thousand workstations shipped worldwide in the quarter, as the market shrunk further from the peak of 1.02 million units it had managed back in Q3'11. ..."
http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...-looking-to-break-out-of-its-recent-doldrums/
or back to 2009
" ... All told, the industry shipped 644.6 thousand workstations, resulting in a 7.1% sequential increase over the second quarter (and a more moderate 24.5% year-over-year decline). ..."
http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...g-its-health-but-the-road-to-a-full-recovery/
In 4 years this market added about 288K units/3Q. At this point, Apple sells about 288K Macs in about one week. Baselined against aggregate Mac growth, the Mac Pro percentage has been shrinking.
Similarly.
" ... AIB shipments decreased 17.3% from the last quarter (the 10 year average is just -0.68%). On a year-to-year comparison, shipments were down 10%. ..."
http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/add-in-board-report-Q4-2012-crash-down/
That drags in the overall boards. Pro graphics cards are generally tracking up ( first link above), but is that something positive for overall system sales? [i.e., extending system lifetime with card upgrades. ]
There is the deep underlying flaw in chasing after stagnant markets like high end media producers. It is a fixed sized group. There will be some relatively short term growth as take up a position in that submarket. However, once established relative stagnation follows. Stagnation --> canceled (or minimally back-burner) Apple product.
Finally, there is the factor of specialization in maturing markets. Apple has managed to drive higher than PC industry growth largely by taking share away from other PC vendors. (those vendor's decline helping to fuel Mac growth). It is basically reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Similar factor is going on in the Workstaiton market were a smaller set of remaining players to taking up a larger share
Given the overall Mac growth is now in the crapper, the Mac Pro baselined against won't look as bad if it got onto a positive 5-8% long term growth path. However, if the Mac Pro goes back to 0-2% and the Mac market goes back to 5-9%, then the "pro" market will be shrinking again and that will probably be it for the Mac Pro.
Let me put it this way:
What are the reasons that prevent you from buying a top-of-the-line iMac instead?
What are the reasons that prevent you from buying a top-of-the-line iMac instead?
I'm quite long here, and almost all these years we've seen speculations / fears that the entire pro computing segment will disappear. It didn't happen so far, and somehow I believe it won't happen in the future. Why? I think they need all their spectrum to be a company they are. And another speculation: imagine all the iOS things will lose their appeal, what then? Apple needs all kind of customers to survive in long term. Which again is a pure speculation.
call -151
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Even though it is showing its age now I love my 2007 iMac. I would have bought a pro by now though if it were not for that fact that all my choices (even 'new' ones) are years old hardware.
So why do I hate the current iMac? It can do all I actually *need*.
It has extremely limited internal expandability and it is an appliance. That is great for people that do not want to deal with computer stuff but that is not me.
Yes, for a pro you do not get a monitor. Although I certainly hopes nothing happens that takes out my monitor and the tower at the same time! With a pro you can replace one or the other. With the iMac there is no such option.
I am drooling over a 3.5 SSD that is on the market. Oops, I can not install that in an iMac without having the current drive removed. Oh, and if I want raid of any sort? Forget about it with the iMac.
Power-wise, sure I can use a tweaked out 2012 iMac. It severely limits my options of what I can do though.
I think we are seeing the workstation market shrink in general frankly because even the most low end computers are so fast now.
Myself, and part of the mac pro market are in a real niche where we actually can never have enough processing power. Give me 32 threads today and I can make them all hit 100% in a few seconds in the apps I use. 99% of the population has more than enough processing power for their needs, and probably did 5 yrs ago but are just realizing it. Someone that barely needed, or just thought they needed a MP 1,1 in 2006 can probably get by with even a mid-level imac today. I'm sure people with even lower requirements can get by on mac air's and ipads now.
Myself, and part of the mac pro market are in a real niche where we actually can never have enough processing power. Give me 32 threads today and I can make them all hit 100% in a few seconds in the apps I use. 99% of the population has more than enough processing power for their needs, and probably did 5 yrs ago but are just realizing it. Someone that barely needed, or just thought they needed a MP 1,1 in 2006 can probably get by with even a mid-level imac today. I'm sure people with even lower requirements can get by on mac air's and ipads now.
0%-2% is not shrinking. Pretty sure that's growing by definition.
Again, I've yet to see any evidence the workstation market is shrinking.
Just on the virtue of people finding computing devices that suit their needs in a form-factor that is not a desktop. The numbers of desktops sold must have gone down.
As I look around me people I know that had a desktop, now use only an iPad, or iPhone to do what they need, and it's fast enough for them. As their dusty iMac or PC in the corner states silently.
Never liked those devices, for me they are way too under powered, and too small to look at. Sure I have an iPhone but, it is primarily for work emails and work communication, especially when I travel. I would not even consider an iPad for me, waste of money, my phone can do all that and fits in a pocket, the real work is done on my Pro.
If Pro's go away, it will be hackintosh, or windows custom built once again.
As I look around me people I know that had a desktop, now use only an iPad, or iPhone to do what they need, and it's fast enough for them. As their dusty iMac or PC in the corner states silently.
Never liked those devices, for me they are way too under powered, and too small to look at. Sure I have an iPhone but, it is primarily for work emails and work communication, especially when I travel. I would not even consider an iPad for me, waste of money, my phone can do all that and fits in a pocket, the real work is done on my Pro.
If Pro's go away, it will be hackintosh, or windows custom built once again.
Your own quotes show an increase between 2009 and 2011. There are still more workstations being shipping in 2012 than 2009.
Apple's math is actually pretty simple: Are they making money on the workstation market? It seems like there is a lot of other things being pushed into the conversation that have nothing to do with that question. How the iMac or Macbook Pro is doing have no bearing on the Mac Pro unless there was significant canibalization. It doesn't matter if Apple's other lines are growing at a faster rate as long as the Mac Pro is making a profit.
No they don't. Apple has 3 going on 4 billion dollar data centers which are key to delivery services that amount approximately the same size as the Mac market they service.
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/04/2...-5-billion-profit-on-43-6-billion-in-revenue/
In short, the iTunes store rapidly pulling up along side the Mac share. Forget iOS devices. That part of Apple is in a completely different zipcode.
None of that service is dependent upon Apple hardware for service provisioning. Apple has multiple tools they use to deliver business, just like their customers do. They don't buy everything from just one vendor who provides everything. That whole model of the vendor who does everthing for everybody doesn't have much economic success support right now. It is an old pre-Internet mindset of how successful companies have to structured.
If Apple can deliver of billions of bits per day on that non Apple hardware, that subset of that this is media could be massaged into place on non Apple hardware and it will have little impact at all on Apple's overall picture.
Apple sells as many iPads in a quarter as Macs all year. The iOS things could decline by 50% in sales and still be bigger growth market than the Mac marktet.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/04/apple-hints-at-new-products-in-q4-and-throughout-2014/
Nevermind the extremely small single digit (if not below ) subset that is the Mac Pro. The iOS devices will plateau. But the Mac Pro isn't going to make up the missing growth gap when they do.
Big company that does everything for everybody..... not the model they used to get to where they are today.
Frankly, these "well you gotta do a Mac Pro product so you can be 'well rounded' " arguments probably do as much to terminate the Mac Pro as continue it. It is an admission by the customers that they see no growth potential. If customers see no growth (new value propositions , new venues where system is useful, etc. ) , how is Apple going to see it? If the customer base consists of the crotchety, "just give me what I've already bought before" customer base then little if anything is going to happen there.
The quotes show that the workstation numbers peaked in 2011 and then declined. It has partially recovered now but there have been a series of advance, decline, flattening, somewhat recover, then more plateau in the market over the last several years . It is a market that is sputtering.
No it isn't. Apple's math is primarily based on growth. If it was simply a matter of turning a profit no matter how low the volume was they'd still be selling XServes at a slightly higher prices.
Has very little to do with cannibalization. It has very much to do with Apple "scarce" allocation of investment resources. Macs which will return a higher ROI and higher growth will get R&D money. Macs that are relatively flatline in growth (or declining ) won't over the long term.
All major Apple products make a profit. It wouldn't be an approved product if it didn't. That is a non-distinguishing characteristic.
There is little to no justification that this is a "insanely great" product if there is no growth. If people aren't buying it can't really be that great; no matter how many hyperbole adjectives Apple may want to throw at the product at the introduction dog and pony show. What counts is folks buying it. Doesn't happen, it either gets fixed to rectify that or it gets canned.
It's a market that is ambiguous. Trying to read anything into it isn't worthwhile. You're trying to point at the downs while ignoring the ups.
More than likely, it's probably tied to workstation component release cycles, which aren't yearly. That's why trying to read into it on a yearly basis is wonky.
Except XServes weren't at all profitable, and at the prices Apple would have to sell them at no one would buy them. It was a very different market than the Mac Pro with a very different structure.
I think you're reading too much into things again. R&D money affects the profitability, but that's about it. And the Mac Pro doesn't exactly require a high amount of R&D either.
Of course all approved Apple products make a profit. Otherwise they wouldn't be a product.
Not sure where you are going with this one.
Again, I don't think it has anything to do with growth. Apple is perfectly happy, as they've said time and time again, with niche products as long as there is profit in it.
A Mac Pro has four internal bays, and let's assume they are SATA 6GBit/ each, totaling 24GBit/s.
A 27" iMac has two Thunderbolt ports, each consisting of two lanes that offer 10GBit/s full-duplex - or 40GBit/s total, enough to drive four SSDs without limiting them while still running a secondary 27" 1440p display.
Hardware RAIDs aren't needed anymore either, as both the iMac's as well as the Mac Mini's CPUs are so powerful that a software RAID only consumes an insignificant amount of CPU cycles. This also works fine with drives connected via Thunderbolt and if you really wanted it, you can get Thunderbolt-attached hardware RAIDs.
If you get AppleCare and update every couple of years, hardware failure won't be a major problem, as you walk out of the Apple Store with a new machine within hours.
Any other reasons?
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not quite true
Few flaws in your thinking. First, the thunderbolt enclosures add greatly to the costs of the imac. When you add up all this you obtain a poor power/cost ratio then with an upgradable machine. Second, if your internal hard drive fails you need to go with the machine to a repair shop(Apple certified) and with the 2012, this is a true nightmare. With pro you just swap other drive in and you're up and running in minutes. From a business point of view i can't afford hours of downtime, let alone days. Personally i do a lot of 3d, mainly animations. While the imac can handle the creation process well enough, the rendering is other story all together. Even the 2009 mac pro obliterate it out off the water. On this type of apps you need all the power you can get. And this is the primary reason for a pro machine. To cover this NICHE segment of the market. In my 15+ years off experience i never seen Apple so bad in terms of both image(it's not a serious company, it's only a consumer company, they don't care about they power users etc.) and products. They don't have regular pattern mode for software or hardware. you don't know what is going to be next month or next year. From a simple user point of view it's fine, but from a business point of view it spells: 'stay away'. Look, i am running a business. My biggest incentive it's not my skills, hardware and software modern equipment etc. No, my biggest incentive IT"S MY NAME. People, my clients, come back to me because i am serious, hard working and i treat them well. THEY CAN RELY ON MY SERVICES. I can't tell this anymore about Apple. Sure, they get more consumers, but pro's are leaving, big time. At least here in Europe....
So, once you loose your good name among your clients what remains from your business? You might get a clue to better understand this by looking at the latest Tim Cook declarations: 'We are committed to computer market, and we will keep producing them'. How lovely, but as a business man i am looking at facts, not words. And they spell exact the opposite.
Few flaws in your thinking. First, the thunderbolt enclosures add greatly to the costs of the imac. When you add up all this you obtain a poor power/cost ratio then with an upgradable machine. Second, if your internal hard drive fails you need to go with the machine to a repair shop(Apple certified) and with the 2012, this is a true nightmare. With pro you just swap other drive in and you're up and running in minutes. From a business point of view i can't afford hours of downtime, let alone days. Personally i do a lot of 3d, mainly animations. While the imac can handle the creation process well enough, the rendering is other story all together. Even the 2009 mac pro obliterate it out off the water. On this type of apps you need all the power you can get. And this is the primary reason for a pro machine. To cover this NICHE segment of the market. In my 15+ years off experience i never seen Apple so bad in terms of both image(it's not a serious company, it's only a consumer company, they don't care about they power users etc.) and products. They don't have regular pattern mode for software or hardware. you don't know what is going to be next month or next year. From a simple user point of view it's fine, but from a business point of view it spells: 'stay away'. Look, i am running a business. My biggest incentive it's not my skills, hardware and software modern equipment etc. No, my biggest incentive IT"S MY NAME. People, my clients, come back to me because i am serious, hard working and i treat them well. THEY CAN RELY ON MY SERVICES. I can't tell this anymore about Apple. Sure, they get more consumers, but pro's are leaving, big time. At least here in Europe....
So, once you loose your good name among your clients what remains from your business? You might get a clue to better understand this by looking at the latest Tim Cook declarations: 'We are committed to computer market, and we will keep producing them'. How lovely, but as a business man i am looking at facts, not words. And they spell exact the opposite.
You can boot a backup of your internal drive via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0, that's even easier and faster than buying a new drive and opening the Mac Pro, and have the internal drive replaced when you're on holidays or similar, or just forget that it's there altogether. To me, that's a non-issue.
So, that leaves us with raw processing power. The next top-of-the-line Haswell iMac will likely have a Hexa-Core CPU that blows previous Mac Pros out of the water, and further upgrades even go beyond that.
I acknowledge that the graphics performance is sub-optimal for rendering, but that's a minor market and then again, most professional software supports setting up a rendering farm to offload the workload. If you're serious about you work, a top-of-the-line iMac plus two Mac Minis to aid rendering cost the same as a Dodeca-Core Mac Pro, and will likely render faster and offer more extendability in terms of performance increases.
So, that leaves us with raw processing power. The next top-of-the-line Haswell iMac will likely have a Hexa-Core CPU that blows previous Mac Pros out of the water, and further upgrades even go beyond that.
I acknowledge that the graphics performance is sub-optimal for rendering, but that's a minor market and then again, most professional software supports setting up a rendering farm to offload the workload. If you're serious about you work, a top-of-the-line iMac plus two Mac Minis to aid rendering cost the same as a Dodeca-Core Mac Pro, and will likely render faster and offer more extendability in terms of performance increases.
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Well, at our studio, we've had 7 "top-of-the-line" iMacs fail since I got my last MacPro (around three years ago when the last real upgrade came out) wasting everybody's time and money.
It's nice they're so thin, makes it easier to cart those shiny little things off to the repair shop en masse.
My last 5 MacPros and 3 preceding Power Mac G5s have had a grand total of Zero Downtime.
I'm just waiting for Tim to pull up the ladder and sell the workstation business to some responsible adults. It makes sense, you wouldn't go to a Phone Company or a Music Purveyor to buy a computer anyway, and that's where Apple's concerns seem to lie.
SATA channels don't multiply bandwidth like that. Conceptually they are independent serial links that would present as additive bandwidth. Pragmatically they are not. Almost all SATA channels are hooked to a SATA controller that does the aggregation. The throughput of the controller is smaller than the number of lanes it supports. So if there are 4 lanes the controller is in charge of the throughput to the controller is perhaps 2-3 lanes worth. It is almost never the same on both sides.
There is an assumption built into SATA that the devices on the link are slower and have latencies. The "faster than the devices" speed it used to time-slice between the devices in transporting data.
Almost the same issue. Thunderbolt ports aren't additive. The 20 on one port is far more so meant to be balanced against the 20 on the other so that there is no bottleneck along the TB chain as traverse any one node. It is not geared toward directing all of that internal to one box.
For drag racing RAID 0 (or 1 or 10 ) set ups perhaps. RAID 5 or 6 not so much. Besides it is extremely likely that this is just a matter of the hardware RAID just changing positions. Any high performance SSD has a hardware RAID inside.
Similarly,Hardware RAID is needed because SATA controllers can be saturated. Especially the ones get for "free" with the core IO support chipset. Also similar to the SSD situation above there is already a hardware raid built in. If buying a high performance IO support chipset there is likely already one there.
Also similar to the above Thunderbolt is merely just changing the location of the RAID card. Most Thunderbolt solutions essentially take the functionality of a PCI-e card and move the "card" into the external box. Thunderbolt is not particularly cost effective at all for a single drive external box. Most likely will have a box that has multiple drives sitting behind some SATA/RAID controller.
For 4-6 drives going Thunderbolt doesn't make much sense at all. For the Xeon E5 solutions Intel's C600 chipset (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/server-chipsets/server-chipset-c600.html) supports
at least 10 SATA channels. For example the C602, which is likely what Apple would use, has 2 6Gbps ones ( and probably 4 more that are SAS-turned-SATA only ). Effectively, Apple (and eventually the user) has already paid for them when buy the necessary chipset. A design that just wastes all that is just kind of silly. It is there might as well use it. For greater than 6? sure... go outside.
Very similar issue with the 40 PCI-e lanes on a Xeon E5. Going through gryations to "export" that connectivity makes no sense. Even less sense given those are PCI-e v3 speed lanes and Thunderbolt can't even handle that bandwidth improvement.
My point exactly: Most people demanding "PCIe expansibility" overlook that Thunderbolt is just a fancy name for external PCIe and will happily connect an SATA chipset to the system.
However, because of that, I do think that Thunderbolt, under appropriate circumstances, does add up to 20GBit/s full-duplex, i.e. by attaching two daisy-chained RAID boxes (read LaCie Little Big Disks) to one port, each using one of the PCIe x4 links.
The bottom line is, as far as I can tell from the outside, that Apple seems to be consolidating the professional workstation and the high-end consumer markets, however the users who intend to upgrade their machines are left in an unpleasant limbo for an awful long time, which is not only quite un-Apple-y, but also unfair to the users who still believe that there will ever be an update to the Mac Pro.
They certainly have their reasons for doing this, but in that case people should be realizing by now that they are equally well or better off with an iMac plus accessories that provide functionalities their workflow requires for what should actually result in the same investment. They should also inform their (still) loyal customers that the Mac Pro was fun while it lasted, but that it's time to move on, along with solutions to aid the transition.
That, or give it the cutting-edge upgrade it deserves - without waiting for a slow quarter to push the numbers or whatever elaborate stuff they've conceived in this regard.
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Pretty much everything has external ports of some sort, next player? Anything that gets permanently connected to the computer that does not NEED to be outside (keyboard, monitor, and some sort of a mouse/trackball/whatever, printer, possibly shared drive arrays) should go inside the box. If it can not you need a bigger box.
Every device outside means another power cord, another data cable (possibly those 2 get combined), another fan and, yes, yet another box to worry about.
So putting stuff inside the case makes it heavier. A desktop is not a laptop.
An all-in-one computer with a bunch of accessories will never be in the same league as a proper workstation with internal expandability and a tower form factor. Axing the Mac Pro would make the Final Cut X debacle look mild.