Here are “some interesting tidbits and nuggets I’ve picked up regarding the new Mac Pro from people and sources who know their stuff,” Thom Holwerda writes for OSNews.
“The Mac Pro was in limbo inside Apple. The decision to go ahead and develop a modular Mac Pro replacement seems to have been made only in recent months, with development starting only a few weeks ago,” Holwerda writes. “I have no idea how long it takes to develop a new computer like a Mac Pro, but I think we can expect the new Mac Pro late 2018 at the earliest, but most likely it won’t be until early 2019 before it ships.”
“After the announcement of the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, orders for refurbished ‘old’ MacBook Pros supposedly went through the roof, and after the initial batch of reviews came out, they shot up even higher. This response to the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar took Apple completely by surprise,” Holwerda writes. “Combined with the problems surrounding the LG UltraFine 5K display and the constant negativity from professional Apple users, the company decided to double down on professional users.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Even Apple, currently languishing at the utter depth of their woefully mismanaged shit-show, isn’t delusional enough to think “early 2019” or even “late 2018” will be acceptable to professional Mac users whom Tim Cook & Co. have hung out to dry for 3 years and counting.
If we’re wrong, and the next-gen “modular” Mac Pro won’t launch until late 2018/early 2019, then Apple needs a new CEO and a thorough upper management housecleaning today, a mere five years after Steve Jobs’ death.
SEE ALSO:
Laggard, trailing Apple needs to catch up HP’s workstation designs – April 7, 2017
Why Apple’s promise of a new ‘modular’ Mac Pro matters so much – April 6, 2017
Apple’s cheese grater Mac Pro was flexible, expandable, and powerful – imagine that – April 6, 2017
More about Apple’s Mac Pro – April 6, 2017
Apple’s desperate Mac Pro damage control message hints at a confused, divided company – April 6, 2017
Who has taken over at Apple? – April 5, 2017
Apple’s embarrassing Mac Pro mea culpa – April 4, 2017
Who’s going to buy a Mac Pro now? – April 4, 2017
Mac Pro: Why did it take Apple so long to wake up? – April 4, 2017
Apple sorry for what happened with the Mac Pro over the last 3+ years – namely, nothing – April 4, 2017
Apple to unveil ‘iMac Pro’ later this year; rethought, modular Mac Pro and Apple pro displays in the pipeline – April 4, 2017
Apple’s apparent antipathy towards the Mac prompts calls for macOS licensing – March 27, 2017
Why Apple’s new Mac Pro might never arrive – March 10, 2017
Dare we hold out hope for the Mac Pro? – March 1, 2017
Apple CEO Cook pledges support to pro users, says ‘we don’t like politics’ at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting – February 28, 2017
Yes, I just bought a ‘new’ Mac Pro (released on December 19, 2013 and never updated) – January 4, 2017
Attention, Tim Cook! Apple isn’t firing on all cylinders and you need to fix it – January 4, 2017
No, Apple, do not simplify, get better – December 23, 2016
Rare video shows Steve Jobs warning Apple to focus less on profits and more on great products – December 23, 2016
Marco Arment: Apple’s Mac Pro is ‘very likely dead’ – December 20, 2016
How Tim Cook’s Apple alienated Mac loyalists – December 20, 2016
Apple’s not very good, really quite poor 2016 – December 19, 2016
Apple’s software has been anything but ‘magical’ lately – December 19, 2016
Lazy Apple. It’s not hard to imagine Steve Jobs asking, ‘What have you been doing for the last four years?’ – December 9, 2016
Rush Limbaugh: Is Apple losing their edge? – December 9, 2016
AirPods: MIA for the holidays; delayed product damages Apple’s credibility, stokes customer frustration – December 9, 2016
Apple may have finally gotten too big for its unusual corporate structure – November 28, 2016
Apple has no idea what they’re doing in the TV space, and it’s embarrassing – November 3, 2016
Apple’s disgracefully outdated, utterly mismanaged Mac lineup is killing sales – October 13, 2016
Apple takes its eye off the ball: Why users are complaining about Apple’s software – February 9, 2016
Open letter to Tim Cook: Apple needs to do better – January 5, 2015
2019? Why stop there. Make it available in 2020.
It sounds cooler.
Tim Cook asks,”Mac Pro, what’s that?”
This person is way off. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some type of teaser during wwdc, and at the very latest the fall for an announcement. All they really have to do is iterate on the cheese grater with modular modern components.
There is literally no chance the ‘cheese grater’ design will return.
And that may be the main reason they are shooting for 2018. Apple’s approach to design (during Jobs years, and apparently today as well, judging by the Watch, and the other post-Jobs products) is to meticulously go over every single hardware detail before accepting it. Nobody takes as much time to develop and launch a new product.
Let’s see…
What you are describing is more of the Apple of the past .. not the apple of today.. unfortunately ( the list of idiotic screwups is long )
And hence all the rage, bewilderment and frustration.
Apple pull all the stops… this is as high a priority and as urgent (critically so) as anything else. .. Use all the resources and force at your disposal,….( i dont believe there is any shortage of that at Apple, is there? )
Reassess maybe some of your jaded managment ?!
Pros !!! both at macOS and iOS level should be considered of outmost importance …. they are your legs , they are your foundation !… Lose them and you lose all your credibility ! Zero doubt in my mind !
To me, this Pro misconception at Apple should be considered a crisis level disaster. .. needing Immediate and full force Attention. !
I wish you were right about that (pros being the legs, the foundation), but that has stopped being the case long time ago.
As I had written elsewhere today, Mac is really no longer the focus of Apple. Its primary (perhaps sole) purpose for them is to be a development platform for iOS, which is the focus of the company. Apple is essentially a mobile devices and services company today.
While most of Mac users don’t actually use Macs for iOS development, Apple doesn’t really mind (or care). Mac has long stopped being a cash cow and is rapidly a diminishing return on R&D investment. It is increasingly difficult for Apple to justify putting resources into its development, when the share of revenue (and profit) that Mac sales represent within the overall Apple profits is quite small and shrinking. To develop a new Mac doesn’t cost much less than to develop a new iPhone, and that new iPhone will bring eight times the profits of that new Mac ($54B for 78 million iPhones sold, vs $7B for 5 million Macs sold; not counting iPads or iPods). So, for now, Apple will keep subsidising Mac development with iPhone profits, but there is no way we should expect that Apple would put a major development effort into a new Mac for “pro” users. Out of those 5 million Mac buyers, less than half million are high-end pro users; the rest are ordinary people for whom a ten-year old iMac, or MBP / MBA would be fast enough.
Sorry Predrag, y’re neglecting this:
Those who are “less than half million”, are the ones who are making:
1.- the Apple hallo
2.- the apple aura
3.- the ecosystem of the iDevices that differentiates them from wannabe manufacturers products
4.- The apple Brand mirror
They are the ones who speak for Apple products and build the iPhones and tablets souls.
They are Artists, creators, Journalists and developers that give sense to Apple products. “THE ONLY THING YOU CAN’T DO IS IGNORE THEM”! Loose them, and you won’t worth anymore better than all the other wannabe imitators!
Steve… we miss you so much!
like I wrote earlier:
“at one point iPod was making the most money at Apple. It dwarfed everything else Apple had. It was ground breaking. Pundits were saying Apple should focus on music products and forget the Mac. Jobs didn’t listen but doubled down on Macs and worked on other projects. (go count the number of Mac models Steve made after his “PC wars are over” go to the next thing comment in 1990s, it is mind boggling. He had one new Mac ad every month even AFTER iPhone launch.
Last quarter Macs just made the SECOND MOST REVENUE in hardware at Apple next to iPhone. It made 7 billion vs 5 billion iPad and near TWICE the the other products category that contains Apple Watch, Apple TV, iPod, Beats, Airpods and other accessories. iPad sales have fallen to near half peak sales a few years ago and in spite of monstrous neglect (slow updates, practically no advertising , not even cheap web ads..) Macs revenues have been steady beating PC growth. Mac sales only slowed when Apple attention to updates etc became so absurd it was intolerable to consumers (the Mac Pro is a 2013 model).
If Apple throws out Mac because it makes less than iPhone than it should also throw out iPad, Beats and all those other stuff I listed.
iPhones make more than any other product in the world, it makes more than Google, more than all the cars of Ford, if things are thrown away if they make less than iPhone, all the companies in the world should shut down.
Neglecting stuff and then saying it ‘don’t sell’ seems silly.
Microsoft bungling around has moved 300-400 million Win 10 licenses and says its aim is 1 billion. Mac market share has dropped to 7 % , there is PLENTY of Room to Grow Mac sales. (note apple didn’t even run marketing ads during the win 8 fiasco years !! )
as for adequate speed, Macs aren’t even adequate for a lot of GAMERS much less high end graphics pros. A PC can have triple the frame rate of the Cylinders. Some games you have to turn to medium or low res to play even on a new MBP. The GTX 980 ti I have in my Cheese Grater has 200 plus fps vs the 60 plus fps in the high end D700 Cylinder (I’m just using fps as an indication of GPU power. GPU strength is used more than just for games).
you say ” fiducially irresponsible” to meet the demands on the small Mac Pro market. What about ‘Ethical Responsibility’ ? Tim cook has harped so much on Apple’s ethics, just yesterday he was out again talking about helping and being responsible to minorities etc (which is a moral thing) but are OUTSIDE minorities only important while CUSTOMER minorities are not.? so when MONEY is involved ethics disappears under Tim Cook and Apple? (that would put a kibosh on Cooks’ ethics soapbox)
A lot high end pros invested lots of money into the Apple eco system listening to apple’s marketing spiel over the years about Apple’s commitment to Mac (remember the Photoshop shootouts they use to hold , buying Aperture, FCP etc were all aimed at Pros) so is hanging out those Pros to dry ethical? Until the Mac meeting this week, pro Mac users didn’t even have a timeline, they , their staff, families, depend on their equipment for their livelihoods — do they switch to windows, retrain staff — etc. Fortunately Apple realized it’s mistake and thought that their customers are important enough to make that meeting and reassure it’s pro customers. Perhaps a bit late and slow but better than abandoning it due to ‘ fiduciary ‘ concerns.
BTW : “Tim Cook spent about 100 Billion (that’s with a B) on buybacks etc to boost the stock. The Number One reason the stock is so low, about half the valuation ( P.E ) of Google, Microsoft (i.e if they had their valuation aapl would be 300 now instead of 100+ ) is that big investors say Apple is a dangerous ONE PRODUCT iPhone company. DIVERSIFYING it’s product line with high earning Macs seems a great solution when you think about the billions in cost for stock buybacks.”
——
Apple user for over 2 decades, aapl investor. for personal use I have Mac Pros, 12.9 iPad Pro, MBP and iPhone 7 plus.
I want Apple to Win.
This.
And what Steve’s legacy really was … was being willing & able to be in it for the long run, not merely next Auarter’s returns.
That’s what’s missing under Tim & Johnnie: long term vision.
-hh
I agree that Apple should double down.
The counter argument that ‘Apple lacks resources to do Mac well besides other stuff ‘ is silly.
here is a list of Macs Jobs did (btw. AFTER his “PC wars are over” we lost move on to the new thing ‘ comment) in his second tenure, all done in about 10 years with an Apple that had much fewer resources (actually financial crisis the first few years):
—————
“Just the KEY Macs (there are many more in between upgrades)
–
IMac :
bondi blue,
multicoloured,
Graphite IMac
Lampshade flat Panel
G5 Flat Panel
Intel Aluminium
Macbook:
iBook Colored Clamshell
Powerbook g4 Plastic
iBook White
Powerbook G4 Aluminium
Macbook Intel White
Black Macbook
Macbook Intel Aluminium
Macbook Pro
Macbook Air
Macbook Aluminium Unibody
Desktops:
G4 Cube
Mini G4
Mini Intel
Unibody Mini
Tower:
G4 Graphite Plastic
G4 Silver Plastic
Power Mac G5 Aluminium
Mac Pro Intel
(like I said each of these might have several different models and in-between models which I didn’t list)
—–
All besides iPods, iPads and the iPhone, Apple Store set up, iTunes, App Store etc etc.
Besides a KICK ASS MARKETING CAMPAIGN. For example there was one new Mac Ad a month (!) under the Mac/PC guy (66 different ads over 4 years that petered out around T.C’s rise to interim CEO).
and people say Apple today ‘lacks resources’ to fix the Apple TV Remote etc.
(AND btw under Jobs the stock rose average out to around 30-40% annually… )
You forgot to mention the millions Apple & Jony spent, creating all those wonderful Emojies. I mean, who needs a new Mac, when you can create a new look with a nice shiny icon of a piece of shi@
Well, they weren’t meticulous with the Mac Pro. The thunderbolt connections are unreliable, the on/off switch is hard to find and they obviously never spoke to any Pro users or bothered to hook up a drive array or a tap drive or card readers.
It was just a Jonny Ive wank.
I don’t see Apple ever recovering their Mac mojo. It’s the only product that you can use for real work and no-one in the senior management team actually does any serious work with a Mac. I surmise this because so many things are either missing or don’t work properly.
The new Pages update STILL doesn’t include two essential features for real work: being able to change the page layout per section (for landscape charts or tables in a portrait document) and numbered chapter headings. Both were in Pages 9.
The new keyboards are for casual use only. Not typists. If Apple had done something with dictation that might half-excuse their provision of a pretend keyboard, but dictation is yet another Mac dead-end, now ignored. I’m not going to buy another Apple notebook. I really dislike the keyboard on my MacBook. I find myself lusting after an old clunky desktop keyboard with lots of travel… it would be quieter too – the flat chiclet keys don’t register half the time unless I bang them hard: that makes a lot of noise and attracts lots of disapproving glances when flying…
And Apple seem to have taken Steve Jobs comment about milking the Mac to heart. The MacBook Pros are just silly prices.
And, you know, Windows 10 is okay. And at least Microsoft Office supports people who really use their computers.
Mail can’t sort a large inbox into unread/read. It must be old code with some limitation on memory or array sizes.
There is an ages old bug when using rules (which I reported years ago to the black hole of Apple bug reports). If you have a lot of rules and you go through them one by one to edit them, the form shrinks by a pixel every time until you can’t edit the rule. You have to exit rules and re-enter. It’s a nuisance only but I think it demonstrates how uninterested Apple is in the Mac.
Safari still doesn’t work with lots of sites and I have to rely on Chrome more and more. Why is this?
There is, of course, a major problem with having a CEO who isn’t a computer guy. He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t create complex documents, or manage his own mail. Ive must be the same. He liked to play with the Mac font but he hasn’t had any obvious impact on software design – an awful lot of which is now ancient.
It’s a shame but, let’s face it, without Steve it was never going to be the same.
And people will get bored with changing phones every year. I think my iPhone 6 has at least another three years in it. I own it. I’m not spending $1000 for a new one.
You have brought up many fine points. The point that always bothers me is that it is either a IOS or Mac. Why not both? Apple has more resources than Steve Jobs could have imaged. There is more than enough to do both and then some. Apple continues to grow in office space for an ever increasing work force. What are all these people doing? Both men & women. They all can’t be working on the iPhone can they? I know some are working on operating systems but what are the rest doing? Are the rest working on the ear buds, watches, and iPhone accessories? How about that car thing we’ve all read about but strangely has disappeared? It can’t be the professional software, most of that is gone. Pages, Numbers, and the like can’t take that many. Can I flow text from one text block to another yet? Maybe their all in the entertainment business, coming up with new versions of iTunes, music stuff, and headphones. Don’t tell me the rest are working on Apple TV and Sir. If they are, Apple needs to find another group as they have lost there one time lead to an on-line order house. And it certainly hasn’t been working on the Mac. By their own admission there in a box now and are asking purchaser to come back in a year or two after they’ve waited 4 years already. What are they doing? Shush, it’s a secret but the pipeline is very bright, so says a CEO that is good with distribution but not with product releases. Continue to remember that the pipeline is amazing. But with all this, I’m still wondering what all these people and resources are doing?
If they can do iPhones every year, why can’t they do something as simple as a Mac Pro, where it doesn’t need to be drop proof, water proof, have a glass screen that cracks and where the tolerances are so much easier?
They said very specifically in the small press briefing that it would NOT be this year, so…
Hope you’re right, though.
Phil Schiller has already gone on record saying it won’t launch this year so I don’t know why you think it will.
I specifically said “teaser” by wwdc and announcement by fall. That does not mean launch. Also you have to pay close attention to what Phil said. He said “probably not this year” that doesn’t mean definitely. The last time he said probably not any time soon, they announcend the trash can in 2013. I was deliberate in my choice of words, as was he.
Even the new Apple under Tim Cook does not work on the cylinder Mac Pro for 3 years getting absolutely nowhere. Even the dumbest management would have realised over a year ago, that the MAC Pro needed a redesign. That is why the cylinder Mac Pro has not hat a single upgrade, Apple knew long ago it was a dead end product. I say relax everyone, 2019 is a bullshit, fake news headline. These stories always claim to have sources ‘in the know’
You’re right. They wouldn’t talk to the press this openly unless they were already well along the way to re designing the thing. This is a trial balloon to get interest up and possibly stop some of the bleeding. The price cut is to clear out stock (it’s pretty significant) , and then they’ll tease it relatively soon. That’s my impetus for saying announcement this fall.
Apple has been an ass, and they acknowledged it by staging this meeting with tech bloggers to signal change, hoping to stop the hemorrhaging of sales and mindshare, market share, and profit share in the workstation market. Likely the BOD requested this reset of the Mac Pro in the face of relentless political pressure from pro users. Cook himself was never convincing in his defence of the Mac, and has shot his wad. I no longer hang on his every word, as I used to do with the charismatic Steve Jobs. Now I just see the moving lips of a politician trying to save his job, after placing too many bets on the wrong horse.
Agree overall.
FWIW, the press bit just reaffirms to me my notion that the LG arrangement was just a stop-gap measure, and never meant that Apple was getting out of the display biz.
“If we’re wrong, and the next-gen “modular” Mac Pro won’t launch until late 2018/early 2019, then Apple needs a new CEO and a thorough upper management housecleaning today, a mere five years after Steve Jobs’ death.”
Steve Ballmer was the best thing that ever happened to Apple. It looks like Tim Cook is returning the favor.
Full-torso vaporous apparition.
Apple does use HP servers in their very own data centers.. so ya, pretty much that is the new mac pro.
Unless Apple aren’t Pro’s….
ALL of us should send that to Pipeline Timmy EVERY day!
Drool. 😛
Although I know several colleagues who went for the HP Z- series, I think the most severe ass kicking in terms off speed and configuration madness, are the machines from Mediaworkstations. I’m personally in the process of ordering a i-X2 setup, as I need to run Octane – something that isn’t even possible with Apple’s hardware. It’s a shame that Apple doesn’t license their OS, especially since they’ve shown over and over again how little interest they have in serious hardware (and software!) for demanding professionals. Anyway, it’s impossible to deny the ongoing exodus among demanding professions as of the last couple of years – just look up the amount of articles, blogs or YouTube channels where 3D/Video/CAD/PostPro professionals are being guided through the steps to switch to a Windows workstation. Oh, and I know there is a strong Hackintosh community, but I have no idea how good or reliable those machines are in a demanding environment.
Right on! 🎯 MDN
@MDN – WAY WAY WAY BLOWN OUT OF PROMOTION – wow. MDN is loosing it over this pro thing. I put up with their Massive amount of bullshit ads to come here and read this stuff but not for long if this shit storm of an over blown perspective keeps happening. maybe they can go report for microshaft! 🙂
MDN
you even have dorks like this guy
yojimbo007 liking your shit… sad
Apple has become a joke.
You are a born joke.
heh, cool.
hahahahhaha. Awesome. IF ONLY it were that easy!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bear in the mind the source. Thom over at OSNews has been vocally anti-Apple for a long time, so I tend not to trust any pronouncements he puts out there about future Apple strategies.
I can only believe there had been civil war going on inside the Company due to the lack of a strong decisive leader, be that Cook himself or I’ve going as ol from the responsibilities that Jobs clearly expected him to take after his death. For the first time I truly do see the company as rudderless with little sign of it changing anytime soon. The Mac Pro debacle this past week is simply proof of our increasing fears of that. Certain irony that as the share price goes through the roof there is for once real reason to fear for tag future. It’s lucky that performance hasn’t been truly hit yet but then the hit usually trails the actual failures of management by some distance which is shy they fail to take action soon enough. Apple is more camel than stallion at present and it’s not clear who the force to change that is going to be at present. Meanwhile Cook lectures others about the ingredients for success. The lack of vision is only equated by his apparent lack of self awareness.
What?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
APPLE, are you suffering from mental constipation?
Get off your lazy butts and make a WORKSTATION!!!!!!
I’m moving on. I’ve got things to do. Screw it.
IF this goofy rumor proves itself to be true, there will be a very public revolt. Apple has already blown off short term Mac Pro sales with this dopey drama. They’d be better off throwing together a beige box with top specs within 2017 rather than embarrass themselves with a 2018, let alone 2019 box-of-beauty.
This guys sources are people that know there stuff? Really. This is just speculating. Nobody knows when Apple decided to do this. Nobody knows if they been working on a prototype. Nobody knows what stage of development it might be in. So if they said anything at all is because they already figured some stuff out. Why announce anything if you don’t even know what you are going to be releasing. This article is just stupid.
No surprise here. 2019 is actually fast, by Apple standards.
I know most of you who read this are not a CEO. I am! And for 14 different companies. I know to manage teams and get things DONE! I also can recognize when someone fails so many times that they are not made for this job. A CEO must learn how to be a good leader and diversify time between a ton of things going on so progress moves across the board. Tim is just made for this job and I am surprised by some who think he is. I could fix Apple in 3-6 months with the budget and manpower they have. Tim is just a poor leader and doesn’t know how to get things DONE! … at least not a lot of things done. This is why I want him removed and I stand behind that statement until it happens. I have a huge stake as a shareholder in Apple, and I use it across all my corporations. The lack of updates is embarrassing. The amount of sku’s are not too high, that it can’t be updated on a regular basis. There is zero reason why there are not teams, that are given timelines and deadlines to accomplish what is needed to be done.
Sign this petition to remove him. I am aware it’s a small little petition, but it actually can grow viral if people realize that Apple MUST remove him if it wants to thrive (something that is currently NOT doing).
https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple
I think you would be interested to read a similar blog post on my website