“The new Mac Pro won’t be coming until 2019. The next Mac mini doesn’t even have a public timeline. The MacBook Air refresh is still just a rumor. Add to that AirPort routers, iPod touch, and iPad mini, which haven’t seen updates in just about as long, and it makes many on the outside wonder just what exactly one of the world’s most popular and richest companies is doing with its product lines and resources,” Rene Ritchie reports for iMore. “So what’s going on?”
“If Apple was an airport, over the last couple of years, it has grown from a single runway with a few planes flying to a few, closely clustered cities, to having multiple runaways trying to handle an ever-increasing load of flights across the country and around the world,” Ritchie reports. “And there just aren’t enough runways to handle all the flights.”
“It’s strange to think about one of the richest companies in the world not having enough resources, but money doesn’t solve all problems,” Ritchie reports. “Apple could — and I’d argue should — keep all products it currently sells up-to-date with the latest specs. That includes Mac mini and MacBook Air, obviously. But I don’t have to run those projects. I don’t have to decide between the integration work needed to spin up Kaby Lake on the Mac mini requiring me to pull engineers off iMac Pro and blowing the end-of-2017 shipping window.”
“We know we have to do something but other things just keep coming up, delaying us, compounding the delays, making it easier if every more frustrating to keep compounding those delays. Each one may be reasonable in isolation, and each decision logical when its made, but over time the results are untenable,” Ritchie reports. “But it’s a problem Apple has to solve. It’s a faith with its customers that it can’t break — especially for devices like the 2013 Mac Pro where Apple removed the ability to upgrade them on our own and, hence, took on that responsibility itself.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: By SteveJack
A veritable routine of apologist gymnastics peppered with airport metaphors cannot obscure the fact that Apple Inc. is mismanaged from the very top.
It does not take a world class manager to realize that if you neglect the Mac Pro, you royally piss off the very core of your customer base – the very ones who brung ya through the very darkest of days (i.e. bankruptcy). It doesn’t take a world class engineer to take the cheese grater Mac Pro and modernize its internals. That should have been started in 2014 when Apple realized they’d screwed the pooch with their dead-end, Jony Ive vanity project and shipped in 2015, at the latest, while they worked on a modern replacement that catered to professional Mac users’ actual needs.
Tim Cook suffers from misplaced priorities. They simply do not match what Steve Jobs’ Apple was about: Attention to detail, striving for perfection, delighting customers, hard work, “it just works,” ease-of-use, shipping on time in proper quantities, etc.
Here’s a quote from Tim Cook, from 2008. To see how far off track he’s gone in a decade, apply it to the current Mac Pro which the company he now runs — supposedly; we’d like to see him try to tell Jony what to do — last updated in 2013 and which he is planning as selling as Apple’s top-of-the-line professional desktop Mac into 2019:
You kind of want to manage it like you’re in the dairy business. If it gets past its freshness date, you have a problem. – Tim Cook, November, 2008
Tim, you have a problem.
If you can’t stand the heat, or recognize where and/or when to apply the heat, get out of the kitchen and let somebody who genuinely cares about Apple’s products, services, and brand integrity take over.
To end on a positive note, I’ll quote myself from last November: “Of course, it’s all hugely complicated by the fact that the transition happened the way it did. Jobs was taken way too soon. He left Cook with the albatross of building the massive Apple Park, a huge distraction that is still ongoing. Hopefully once the core of the company is moved in there and working, strange things like neglecting the Mac Pro for years will stop happening.”
SEE ALSO:
Why is it taking Apple so long to update the Mac Pro? – April 10, 2018
Apple’s latest announcements about the modular Mac Pro really ramp up expectations – April 6, 2018
Apple needs to stop promising new products and start delivering them – April 6, 2018
Apple: No new Mac Pro until 2019 – April 5, 2018
Apple reiterates they’re working on an all-new modular, upgradeable Mac Pro and a high-end pro display – December 14, 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
