“Despite the coming availability of a new generation of Sandy Bridge desktop CPUs suitable for advancing Apple’s Mac Pro line, the company has reportedly been evaluating whether to continue to invest in furthering its full-sized workstation line beyond this year in the face of limited sales,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider.
“Although the Mac maker has reportedly developed a revision to the existing Mac Pro that may or may not see the light of day, people familiar with the matter said management as far back as May of 2011 were in limbo over whether to pour any additional resources into the product line,” Jade reports.
“According to these people, the consensus among sales executives for the Cupertino-based company was that the Mac Pro’s days — at least in its current form — were inevitably numbered,” Jade reports. “In particular, internal discussions were said to focus around the fact that sales of the high-end workstations to both consumers and enterprises have dropped off so considerably that the Mac Pro is no longer a particularly profitable operation for Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lava_Head_UK” for the heads up.]
dear apple,
please don’t make me go to a windows machine for my high end photoshop needs.
pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!
Just wondering, are you looking for better performance than the latest high end iMac for photoshop? What kind of upgrade(s) were you hoping for.
Don’t mean to sound like a Apple Marketing person….just someone who is interested.
Nevermind….I should have read the others first.
I’ve been a Photoshop Pro for over 15 years. You don’t need a Mac Pro for Photoshop. Just load up an iMac with RAM and you’re set. If you had said Premiere or After Effects, or a 3D program, then I would agree with you.
Photoshop. No.
Okay, but this proves that there is still a market for the Mac Pro.
The problem being that Premiere and AfterEffects and Encore run quite well on Windows PCs and even include some features not available on the Mac (such as Blu-Ray authoring). The 3D software I use (SolidWorks) is only available for Windows. Now that I no longer use Final Cut, I have no reason to have this hulking Mac Pro other than the fact that OSX is so much more enjoyable. I run Windows 7 via Parallels Desktop for the increasing number of Windows-only apps I need to run, so, yeah, I’d love to see another generation of Mac Pro, but, just because you need a good bit of power to run Premiere doesn’t mean there’s still a market for the Mac Pro.
Wait, you’ve chosen to use crappy products, when there are superior options (e.g.: Final Cut Pro X) and you think its Apple’s fault you’re getting a worse experience?
Of course adobe wants to force you onto windows….its time to stop giving money to that no account, disreputable company.
FCP X is not a superior product. It’s different. It has some forward thinking organization and is quick for some uses, but also lacks essential features a lot of professionals need. Not want. Not prefer. Need. It’s different. For some, better. For others, dramatically incomplete.
No, it shows that only idiots use Adobe products.
There are better alternatives that don’t install spyware and don’t make you upgrade every year.
I’ve read enough posts from Engineer to confirm he is a troll.
I’ve read enough posts from “fake engineer” to know he’s a Maobama-commie-lover.
The iMac has a glossy screen. I refuse to use a glossy screen for my high-end Photoshop work. If the Mac Pro is eliminated, I’m not sure what I’ll do for my next computer.
Please, Apple, give him the computing power he needs to properly illustrate his next book, the sequel to “Learn With Gurn”.
I was hoping that Apple would build a combined Workstation/Server model. It would keep the numbers up, and these two markets could be served by a similar piece of hardware (recognizing that we’re not talking about 1U rack-mount server setups or even proper data centre use, but that most Mac servers are used by smaller workgroup setups).
They did, it’s called the Mac Mini. If you need beefy hardware, you’re better off getting dedicated hardware — for instance, a Thunderbolt equipped HD video transcoder.
This sucks. They’re completely abandoning professionals. First Final Cut Pro, now this.
Please, it’s a dumb rumor. It’s not going to happen. Apple has to keep the “high ground” with a Mac that has 12 cores (soon 16 cores) on multiple processors. For one thing, iOS developers use them. People in the creative arts use them, and they are important to Apple’s image.
According to these same rumor-moron types, back when laptops started to exceed desktops in sales, ALL desktop Macs were going away and Apple would focus on laptops. Or back when iPod started to become a major force (when “Apple Computer” changed its name to just “Apple”), Apple was becoming a “consumer electronics” company and abandoning computers.
Or iPod classic would be canceled (still hanging around). Or Mac mini would be canceled (it was significantly improved).
But I think a new design is in order. The current (external) design has been around since the first Power Mac G5 (2003). Maybe it can use Thunderbolt to become much smaller and modular, with an array of additional hard drives stored in a separate (matching) enclosure, for those who need more storage capacity or a RAID. The main Mac Pro case would only have an SSD and room for one 3.5-inch hard drive, and that would also cut down significantly on the size of power supply and cooling system that is needed.
Remember that people who write about rumors want hits to their web sites. Therefore, the rumors are going to be as “sensationalist” as possible. They are going to write about things that are in the realm of possibly but highly unlikely, because “probable” things are not as exciting; no one wants boring rumors. That’s why some companies were actually making and selling “iPhone 5” cases, based on a bogus rumor.
“Please, it’s a dumb rumor. It’s not going to happen. Apple has to keep the “high ground” with a Mac that has 12 cores (soon 16 cores) on multiple processors. For one thing, iOS developers use them. People in the creative arts use them, and they are important to Apple’s image.”
The mission of NeXT was to produce a UNIX workstation, as easy to use as a Mac, for University research centers.
The market for high end Macs continues, albeit not like it used to be, but enough to keep development of the high end going. The ‘pro’ market may have to spend two or three hundred (or more) for them, but they will be available.
I actually think this is funny, because 9 or 10 years ago I stated on the AOL Apple board that Apple would be better off abandoning the creative market (1% of total market) in favor of the much larger general use market. In a weird way Apple did just that, only Apple did it in a particularly Apple way. They made creativity available to the masses, on Macs 1000X more powerful that G3/4/5 work stations of the period.
It is in Apple’s “Think Different” DNA to support the Creative Market. To do otherwise is to lose its soul. Even Pixar needs high-end equipment- Apple cannot abandon the pro market. On the contrary- I’d like to see them dominate it completely- buy Adobe. Make it Mac-only.
I think Pixar uses more specialized hardware and software for rendering its animation, and they are not high-end Macs. But I’m sure there are plenty of Macs (including Mac Pros) at Pixar HQ, performing many functions.
Even if it’s not a significant source of profit, I can’t imagine Apple abandoning the work station high ground. It would be like BMW abandoning racing. The Mac Pro in the editing suite and complex design is a symbol of their superiority and seriousness.
Agreed- Apple will not discontinue the Mac Pro.
You’re an idiot.
If you were a professional, you’d know that Final Cut Pro is a dream to work with… doing professional work. In fact, I just cut the most professional short in my life using Final Cut Pro. (I held off on upgrading for a few months because other projects were taking priority…)
That program is, without a doubt, the best cutting tool in history.
Anyone who complains about it not being “professional” is an idiot. (And yes, there are professional idiots. Some people don’t understand they are just trained monkeys… a lot of those types in the video editing industry… but even if your’e a trained monkey, refusal to learn to use new better tools makes you less of a professional, not more.)
I look forward to the day when you types are out of work because younger guys took the time to learn FCPX and are much more efficient editors as a result.
Why would you need to? The top-end iMac uses desktop components rather than laptop ones like the cheaper machines.
You obviously missed the report that said Apple were reintroducing FCP.
I could see it coming but I am still sitting here slack jawed in disbelief. First FCP, now this. I hope it’s just a rumor…
Remember when all the rumors were about Apple planning to discontinue the Mac mini?
Some people have nothing better to do than invent silly rumors to mess with Apple’s stock price. Thank goodness MDN is too smart to fall for their transparent schemes.
Oh wait…
I remember the rumors that the new iteration of Final Cut would take it in a prosumer direction. They were quickly squelched. They turned out to be right. I tend to think this has legs.
The statement did not come from Apple, therefore it is a rumor. Do not believe anything until Tim Cook or someone in upper management says it is so.
You got it.
And remember this:
Just days, even hours, before the iPhone 4S event, we were told that Sprint was getting an “exclusive” to sell the phone into early next year. That there would be two new phones.
And that Steve Jobs would make an appearance.
If there is a prize for the most wildly, tragically wrong rumor of all time, that last one really qualifies.
Substituting an iMac for a MacPro could be feasible since:
1. Current iMac cpus can be very powerful
2. Current iMac gpus can be very powerful
3. Currnet iMacs can hold 32 GB RAM
But:
1. We need a lot more Thunderbolt storage options, esp, reasonably priced ones.
2. We need a lot more Thunderbolt to PCI conversion boxes so that everyone with high powered video and audio cards can continue to use them. Again, these boxes have to be reasonably priced.
I wish Apple would simply make a rack-mountable demi-Mac Pro with half the memory slots (four), hd bays (two), optical bays (one) and PCI slots (two) but at least three or four Thunderbolt ports. If they could figure out a way to swap out the optical drive for a back-up power supply, then it could also double as a rack mount server.
Im currently using a Mac Mini as my primary workstation for Photoshop. 8GB of RAM works just fine. I wouldn’t mind having 16, but 8 works.
32 GB RAM????
I own a current iMac!
But my iMac can hold only 16 GB max. RAM?
yeah I have heard that also.
Macsales.com shows I can put in 32gb.. *everywhere* else says 16gb.
Even Apple says Max 16gb.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4621
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/2011/DDR3_21.5_27
32gb ram
I switched from a Mac Pro to a high end iMac last year. In general, I am happy with the iMac – even with 3D rendering using Modo, game development in Unity3D and some video editing.
Say it isn’t so. I’m dying to get a new macPro. Just waiting for them to release it with thunderbolt.
Obviously, Apple is succeeding in the consumer space and it is logical to continue to concentrate there.
This is the first time in 30 years that I see a “need” for Apple to license it’s OS. One pro/server licensee that would deliver hardware in the space Apple is abandoning.
+1
Holding out hope they license OSX Server to a high-end rackmount server maker like HP or IBM.
That would be sad. I like my Mac Pro. But I suppose I could everything I do on it on a iMac. I’ve had the same Mac Pro since 2006 with no problems. My Mac Pro 1,1 was the best investment I have ever made with a computer. Its extendable. You can add PCI cards to it. You have options with RAM.
I own four of the big silver boxes, one of which I bought used last week. Hard to beat a 2008-2009 3,1 Pro with twin quad-core processors for $1,400.
The Mac Pro is a DREAM for upgrading and maintaining. Optical drives, vid cards and RAM are replaced in minutes; hard drives in seconds. I replaced an optical drive in an older Mac Book two weeks ago and it took nearly an hour; a blindfolded child can replace a Mac Pro optical drive.
With a 1-gig 5770 vid card from Apple and 8 gb of RAM and a 120 gb SSD boot drive from OWC, plus a nice little stack of 1 tb HDDs, I will have 8 cores, 12 gb of RAM, 3.2 tb of on-board storage, a fast graphics card and twin optical drives in an enclosure lovely enough to be a liquor cabinet on a corporate jet — all for $2,200. Top that for your porn streaming needs. Apple might not earn a shit ton of money from the Mac Pro, but there’s nothing wrong with a flagship computer for the users who helped sustain the company during its darkest days.
I can understand the end of the desktop tower form factor but getting rid of the only model Mac that has expand-ability to suit the needs of the professional workstation is beyond me……unless of course we see an expansion of peripherals that can be plugged into another model to really push it to the limits. but wouldn’t that just mean you need more desk space and now have to deal with a myriad of other form factors playing cohesively.
Not a good sign if true. We all get that Apple’s now focused almost exclusively on the consumer space, but not supporting *any* pro products would be unfortunate.
If they drop the current Pro they must replace it with a smaller pro form factor. There are plenty of places where an iMac or Mac Mini is just not practical, e.g. not powerful enough, can’t add specialized expansion cards, can’t easily replace or add hard drives, etc. If Apple doesn’t want to cater to that market, fine… but to borrow Steve Jobs’ own analogy, remember that trucks are still very necessary for the heavy lifting, even though cars greatly outnumber them. If people need trucks, they’ll simply migrate to another truck maker.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, although it is disappointing. The benefit of a Mac Pro is its expandability. And yet, at the same time, getting a fully tricked out Mac Pro with all the expansion can still run you over 13K. I don’t know how much money studios have these days, but for a single computer to run that hot does seem kind of uneconomical compared to just getting several team members fully tricked out iMacs.
“…the company has reportedly been evaluating whether to continue to invest in furthering its full-sized workstation line beyond this year…”
Damn, that would suck.
I suppose that would mean no more need for Apple monitors too then? Oh yeah, a Mac mini with a 27″ T-bolt display *smile*. Yeah, riiiiiight…
Apple has already nuked X-serve. I hope this doesn’t happen or I’ll be selling a kidney to get one of the last ones in production.
You are forgetting about all the great benefits of the Thunderbolt display with laptops. The display pretty much acts as a dock just needing a thunderbolt cable plugged it, and you also have your laptop power from the display too.
I think the thunderbolt display was designed for the laptops, not for the Mac Pro. The writing may be on the wall right there.
I don’t mind as long as they give me an iMac with 8 true cores, a Blu-ray drive, four drive bays and two Ethernet ports.
Four drive bays ain’t gonna happen, but a Thunderbolt enclosure would accomplish the same trick.
An extra Ethernet port would be nice on the 27 inch iMac.
I’m on my 3rd MacPro (G5 before that) and I DON”T WANT a EXTERNAL drive bay enclosure. Thats one less thing to keep powered up, one less power supply, less cabling tangled up on my desktop etc…
How about a bigger version of the Mac mini? It could be like a cube…
Agreed. A modular pro system to replace the current concept of a box that can have multiple processors, disks, etc.
Then the modules might also be used to augment Mac book and Mac book pros so even non-pros who want more power could add to the market.
YB, that’s not what Paul meant.
This my second iMac used for my design work including high end photoshop and to be honest dont see any real difference to when I used a macPro.
Obviously those doing serious 3D work or FCP and/or need expansion and more flexible connectivity may suffer but these are an ever decreasing minority considering the capabilities of the iMac and potential of Thunderbolt. Fact is most design companies have tended to use pretty dated equipment rarely as powerful as I use. Also apart from ram I have never exploited the expansion potential even when it was there. A lot of this is about bragging rights.
That said I hope that an option is left open for those that do need the expansion.
Those expansion needs were taken care of by Thunderbolt.
Rumor and not gonna happen.
“reportedly been evaluating”…
Well, duh. If they don’t evaluate a line, it dies from stagnation. Before going crazy over this, it behooves the curious to find real information, not something that’s “according to these people, the consensus among sales executives”… Remember, sales executives run Microsoft, while former Mac division head/COO and designers run Apple.
Two words Apple is shifting to: PRO-SUMER
Agreed. The dumbing down continues…
If Apple has to get rid of the Mac Pro, they need to at least coming out with a higher end and/or expandable iMac or Mac Mini (but please don’t call it a Mac Maxi). That way Apple would not have to spend the extra time and resources to keep a completely different form factor up to date, and they would be able to make more profit off the Pro level users.
By the way, I just got a new Mac Pro and LED Cinema Display a month ago and love it. This thing screams. I passed my three year old Mac Pro and Cinema Display off to the new hire, and it runs so well, he thinks he got a new computer too.
If they do this, I hope they seriously consider coming out with a mid range tower. Somewhere between a Mac Mini and an iMac. The reason they don’t have a consumer level tower now is because they don’t want it to compete with the Mac Pro. No Mac Pro, no competition.
Even if they don’t come out with a midrange tower I think the possibility to expand a Mac Mini or iMac with Thunderbolt should take care of the Pro level folks and even allow the midrange folks to have some more expandability.
If the Pro is SO indispensable, why is nobody buying them?
Because Apple messed up FCP X that’s why. Most pro shops are stuck running the old versions that don’t take advantage of the hardware they have, let alone needing new.
Because there aren’t nearly as much professionals and scientists willing to buy $3000 towers as there are ordinary people wanting to get their hands on MacBook Airs?
Because Apple updates the Mac Pro so seldom that when you have the money to make a purchase, you are weighing up buying an old Mac Pro at a high price, a new Windows work station that has been updated more frequently or an iMac. If you are lucky, you have the required money at the beginning of the Mac Pro update cycle as they are terrific machines.
Silly, silly Apple.
It’s okay, if you replace the Mac Pro with an “xMac” I’m sure everyone will forgive you. How many people need ultra-high cost server parts and ECC memory, anyway?
Apple should be able to afford to carry some non-profitable computer line. I’ve never owned an aluminum Mac Pro although I’ve always wanted one because I like the idea of being able to have multiple swappable hard-drives and upgradeable graphics cards which I could do with my G4 dualie FW800. Nothing I really needed, but was nice to say I could do.
It’s a shame to see the Mac Pro die since it was such a well-designed workstation. I suppose I can always buy a used late model Mac Pro if I want one that badly. I sure wish those processors were easily upgradeable. I’ve seen it can be done, but I’d never tackle the project since those processors are so expensive to replace if something goes wrong. Oh, well. Apple is running a business and it’s not in the business of losing money. That’s just how it is. If they decide the Mac Pro has to go, then it’s gone. End of story.
I use my 12-core for chemistry calculations that can take several days with every core working full-tilt and was looking forward to a 16-core…. and to using GPUs for floating point. What now ?
I agree with those saying here that if they drop the Mac Pro they should replace it with a smaller mid tower.
I have a Mac pro but don’t use all the expansion bays.
a mid tower with a thunderbolt won’t need so many internal drive bays. The mid tower should have a replaceable video card.
I can understand Mac Pro doesn’t sell well : cost, bulk (the thing is massive) : but a mid tower might do ok.
I also agree with those that say a current mac mini or imac is sufficient for photoshop but for things like 3D more power is better.
Even if they don’t do a midrange tower, a Mac Mini or iMac with Thunderbolt can have expandable graphics. I read a story on here not too long ago that someone had made a box using Thunderbolt that worked as extra PCI slots for a computer. It wasn’t specifically made for graphics cards because the slots weren’t quite wide enough for the high end cards but that doesn’t mean some one won’t make one that is big enough.