The “We Want a New Macpro [sic]” petition page at Facebook has surpassed 12,000 “likes,” closing in rapidly on 13,000 or nearly triple the 4,500 or so it had early Friday morning before the long Memorial Day holiday weekend in the U.S.
The open letter to Apple Inc reads as follows, verbatim:
Hello Apple. Remember me? I’m one of your loyal users. I’m one of the guys who has owned 2 MacPros [sic], a G5, a G4, 4 laptops, one iMac, 4 iPods, one MacMini [sic], 4 iPhones and a bevy of other peripherals and software packages over the last 10 years.
I’m looking for a little clarity.
Can you please let me and the other people on in this group know what is going on with the MacPro? Its been neglected for far too long. We realize all the success of the iPad and iPhone and we’re really happy with our new toys. But unfortunately many of us need to make decisions on hardware for professional uses that allow us to make a living.
We have no desire to go the Dark Side and buy a Windows machine. And while the Hackintosh community has made great strides its not a viable option for a professional environment. Unfortunately you haven’t left us much choice!! The professional software applications like CS6, AVID, Protools, Smoke and others require the most powerful hardware available. The ability to configure systems with specific hardware is essential for our businesses. The iMac is not the answer for these situations. (Not to mention that I already have 54 total inches of professional monitors sitting on my desk!!!)
We’ve held out as long as we can. Many of us will never get the hint that you’ve discontinued the MacPro lineup. So I am asking directly.
Can you please let us know what your plans are?
Is the MacPro officially dead?
Are you going to license OSX [sic] to another hardware manufacturer to build powerful desktops?
You have the best OS on the market. Please let us put it to good use!!!
We have waited patiently. We are only asking for a little insight. A timeframe would really go a long way in this relationship. Please, either set us free and tell us that the hardware is dead or give us a little peak behind the curtain. Its not too much to ask. We cannot wait any longer and its really not fair to string us along like this.
Sincerely
Lou Borella and the Creative Community
The page can be found via Facebook here.
Related articles:
Mac Pro user launches Facebook page to pressure Apple – May 24, 2012
If Apple wants them, new Mac Pro models now possible with Intel’s new Xeon E5 chips next week – March 1, 2012
RUMOR: Apple close to updating Mac Pro – February 14, 2012
Apple reportedly mulling the end of Mac Pro line – October 31, 2011
Yeah, well, that qualifies as a production run. >.>
Need one started for the xserve!!
…NEW MAC PRO
With a 4K resolution screen so we can edit latest resolution movies.
Need a proper computer so one can put cards in it — e.g. video capture, SDI, audio pro cards — don’t want them trailing externally with Thunderbolt cables across the desk, plugged into a consumer computer thank you.
Also, swapping internal storage bays — don’t need a pile of external boxes.
Plus, lots of CPU cores and fattest Nvidia GPU please (for CUDA).
“Call me when your petition reaches 3 million.”
–Tim Cook
Better yet make that at least 4 million. At least 1 Mil per quarter.
My wife still uses a MacPro 400 Sawtooth for bookkeeping.
I still have one that I use to collect dust.
At least yours isn’t costing you anything.
i had one of those from 2000 to 2009. It kept up with the Osx updates from beta to tiger and was upgraded to the hilt.
Eventually I bought a Mac mini. Does everything the old machine did plus drive 2 screens (tv and 21 inch monitor) with wireless networking and keyboard / mouse.
The difference in performance was startling. If you need to use an old Mac more than just for the basics then upgrading is worth it.
Still 9 years was a lot of use for that old machine. She did well but eventually her time came to move on.
That would be a PowerMac, not a MacPro.
I, too, have one from 2000 that I still use for select purposes. It’s also my main OS 9 machine for the increasingly rarer times I want to access an OS 9-only application. I’ve got SCSI hard drives in it. Pretty reliable beast. Had hordes of external drives hooked up to it though.
No such thing. An iteration of the PowerMac G4 was code-named sawtooth. They used Motorola processors. Apple changed the pro-desktop model name to Mac Pro after they switched to Intel.
Signed it last week!
Would rather a mini tower Mac Pro that is extremely expandable.
I would also vote yes to the petition – but since it on FB – i will not be participating.
Hear, hear! (on your second point)
Agreed (on the second point).
I’d sign it, but I don’t have and won’t likely get a FB account.
Maybe I can borrow someone else’s account…
Subliminal message from Apple to Mac Pro users: ‘Get lost.’
Good one. I’m sure that’s exactly what Apple is thinking. As if Apple is going to waste resources on a tiny handful of users when it can be building products that the majority of consumers use. That would be like building a 70’s gas-guzzling muscle-car when the world is going for fuel-efficient electric cars.
There is no profit for Apple to be building some high-end workstation. That’s one market Apple can’t compete in unless they can somehow undercut all those Wintel beast desktops that can cluster a couple of graphics cards via SLI and be overclocked until they melt down. Apple is clearly out of its element and probably knows it. Those Mac Pros probably have minus profit margins and I’m sure that’s a no-no. Sorry, Apple pro users. You’re just not relevant to Apple anymore. Go away.
Discontinuing its pro line of computers is not simply about profit. It is about reputation and supporting a core group of loyalists. Dropping this lets some Winblows manufacturer advertise something like their computers are “the only computers used by professionals around the world.” Once they milk that reputation, they’ll be able to tell consumers that their next computer should be made by the only company with computers that professionals everywhere use. Reputation damage. Marketing damage. Loyalty abuse.
That then hurts profits in areas other than just the pro line. It would be wise for Apple to respond to this petition by upgrading their professional line.
Yes. Exactly.
Exactly. And that is why I support it although personally I don’t need it.
…A FUTURE
Stop the Mac Pro line, and Macs will be next.
Interesting point. I wonder if Apple would ever do that. Personally, I think it would be suicide if they ever did that.
If you follow the logic that Apple should stop supporting the pro community because they sell millions more of other devices, the logical next step is stop selling all desktop Macs … “everyone uses laptops, right?”
Then when Apple are selling millions of iPhones and iPads and iTVs, why bother with Macs at all … only a few users, won’t be missed.
using the tired, old car analogy….is that why BMW, Mercedes etc all produce affordable cars in large production runs and have never made expensive and exclusive cars in small numbers? Think not.
By whatever financial calculation, it would be a heroic gesture for Apple to satisfy this (likely oldest) user base. A win/win situation for Apple at no fiscal damage to them that would rise above business motives and have reverberations throughout their brand of A++++.
My bring back the Newton campaign is going nowhere. :I
Facebook. Sorry, I’m not a member
I’m thinking the CUBE is due for a comeback.
I think Apple may also come out with a replacement for the Mac Pro. Will it be the next Mac Pro? Maybe. But it may be a smaller computer, with room for 2 rather than 4 drives, and cost less. How do I know this? I don’t, it’s just a guess.
But since Apple hasn’t been selling tons and tons of Mac Pros, they may simply scale Few REALLY need a computer with 4 HD bays. Two would be fine. If you need more drives, just plug in some external drives or hook up to a network. And maybe they’ll rename it, maybe not. How about the Mac Pro II or the Mac iPro?
Also, I think many more people are buying external HDs, and with Thunderbolt and USB 3, hooking up really fast, external HDs is SO much easier today. And why would anyone want external HDs? Well, they’re already doing it with the iMac. It makes it so much easier to get a NEW computer up to snuff: just load all your old files onto it using the external HD.
I’ve got a small La Cie rack next to my iMac with six peripheral devices in or on it, and I hook up my iPhone, my iPod touch, and my iPod nano to some of those devices each evening. I couldn’t obtain the data transfer speeds from an external HD before Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt is a game changer.
So, a smaller tower computer may replace the Mac Pro with a smaller form factor, but even more capability than the current Mac Pro or any other Mac (or PC for that matter).
…A TIDY WORKSPACE
Maybe some people don’t like have cables trailing across desks and bundles of extra power cables behind desks, and racks of third party external drives.
If I wanted an ugly set up I could buy a Windows PC, did aesthetics die along with Steve Jobs?
WHO ARE YOU?
…AN OPINION
Someone who is fed up with iMac owners telling pro users they should suck it up and use a consumer device to do their work on, rather than a workstation (a truck as Steve Jobs once said in a metaphor).
Why do the iMac guys keep telling us that we’re wrong, we don’t need workstations, we don’t need SDI cards or pro-audio cards or scientific instrument interfaces apparently, we don’t know what we need to do our work and earn our livings.
My apologies. I did not read enough of the head comment you were responding to and thought you were bashing the proposed resuscitation of the MB Pro. I’m completely on your side–see my earlier comment above.
…NO WORRIES
Not a problem.
But if the Mac Pro goes it’s because the Ops guys are in charge. As many other posters point out, it’s the strategic significance and intangibles that are important … not just the bottom line contribution. I hope Tim Cook sees that.
In the dark days of the 90s when Apple’s market share percentage could be counted on one hand, creative professionals where the ones clinging to their Macs and trying ot keep the brand alive.
Now 15+ later with Apple products everywhere and Windows sucking on fumes, giving the finger to the community of creative users who need hefty Mac Pros seems a little harsh, don’t you think. So what if the Pro doesn’t add billions to the bottom line, it is not exactly a loss leader either.
Finally, I find the analogy of the Pro being like a 70s gas guzzler in the age of fuel efficient cars to be rather off-track. A better analogy is Toyota which builds millions and millons of cars for everyday users, while they also have a well-funded racing division. Their racing cars don’t make money for Toyota, instead they bring the company prestige.
Having creative professional use Mac Pros brings prestige to Apple. The kind of prestige that isn’t generated by a million users on iMacs.
it would be a long-term strategic mistake to get rid of the mac pro.
Axe the Mac Pro, make it a rack fitting super charged part of the Mac Mini market. You have to look at the way Apple has been going for a long time; ever more elegant and simplified product lines; why a MacBook pro and Macbook Air when they could all be MacBooks of progressively larger size and capability? Why have a Mac pro when it could be a highly capable part of the Mac mini line? And at some point, the iPod line will go away too, and be replaced by a line of voice and data capable small devices, perhaps part of an iPhone nano market. It makes business sense and it consolidates their work into a smaller number of product lines but broad in their market segment reach.
These idiots need to find something better to do.
Such as click on (and comment on) a news article about a petition you have no interest in just to call the pros who need a Mac Pro idiots??? You need to stand in the light more often methinks.
Like it or not, Apple ceding the pro market to Windows would be a mistake.
Without the pro the Mac would have been history, and no matter how well you think Apple is doing right now it won’t last forever. When the inevitable decline occurs who will stand by Apple, iPad users???
Think again.
I remember my mother, who was a local politician for many years, telling me, that , petitions were generally ignored, because it is easy to get signatures. The people who sign, generally, do not think deeply about it, but see it as ” yeah that’s great” and that’s all. But people who write individually, there own words, are a different thing.
Best answer to Apple > Change your OS!
I am going to configure a new PC. CS6 demands more power.
You people who do use MacPro’s simply do NOT understand why we need/want them.
I could peddle a bike to work, and maybe strap on everything that I need to carry to work… maybe even a little trailer would help. But that’s not the same as having a sedan with a large trunk.
First off, its IMPOSSIBLE to use a MacMini or an iMac for the work that I do… neither have the requisite PCIe slots for expansion.
Secondly, connecting 4 external drives to a Mini or an iMac via Firewire does not give the same results.
Thirdly, while Thunderbolt may play a part in my future, for now, for storage, the speed barrier will be with the hard drive mechanism itself, not the data bus that connects to it. In theory, Thunderbolt may be faster than Firewire, I doubt it can transfer data faster than copying data between 2 internal drives in a MacPro.
I wish you non-MacPro would stop your projecting about how worthless we are to Apple, because as has been pointed out, once we go, it won’t be long before the only thing Apple makes is iPads and iPhones… and don’t think it won’t happen.
We are content creators… we create the content that you and millions others of iPads and iPhones consume, and we like working on this platform.
I realize we’re a small minority, and our numbers are dwindling, but perhaps sales of MacPros are slow because they haven’t been updated in over 2 years!
I think there will be, among other choices, high powered large screen iPads that can run all kinds of software with a central server and heavy duty cloud integration. It will be able to do whatever kind of work you can do on a Mac Pro!
@Applesmack
No dear. I think you don’t even imaging what production needs are. There will never be iClouded render farm that allows you to drill for two weeks secure rendering. There will never be anything that will justify a total dependence to a sole external network. Heavy duties need to be done with a absolute independence and lots of To backups.
Man: some people NEED TRUCKS, period!
…HEAVY MACHINERY
Business needs trucks. Period.
Even Steve himself used a Mac pro in his home office in his final days. Here’s the proof…
http://www.google.com/search?source=mog&hl=en&gl=us&client=safari&tab=iw&q=steve jobs home office pictures&sa=N&biw=320&bih=416#miuv=2
No more tower Mac Pro’s Please!!!. Mac Pro’s equiped with an Thunderbolt, Display port, USB 3.0, and ethernet ports is all that is needed. At least 1 PCIe 3.0 expansion slot for video cards will be good. Anyone with the need for more than one video card can make this possible through a thunderbolt video card solution. All content creation products can be thunderbolt enababled and then place some where neatly out of sight(if it’s not a product that needs constant physical access to)on the users desk or surrounding area.
I have no interest in a Mac Pro personally. But knowing the contents of my iPads, iPhones, MBPs and Airs is all created on them makes me fear what would happen in the future if they became extinct.
I normally don’t comment here, but there are some excellent points being made, IMO, for Apple to keep this product viable. Also, this is one of the most informative (and civil) conversations I’ve seen here in a long time. Thank you all for keeping it that way!