“What would Apple want to do with one of the world’s leading PC Geeks? Good question, right? Well, Anand Shimpi is heading to Apple by all accounts and has retired from his beloved publication AnandTech,” Anthony Frausto-Robledo writes for Architosh.
“As the owner of Architosh after nearly that long I can tell you, it would not be an easy thing to say good bye. Clearly the opportunities afforded by working at Apple must have been very enticing and possibly reassuring,” Frausto-Robledo writes. “So, what would one of the world’s leading PC Geeks do at Apple?”
“Is it possible that Apple’s new Mac Pro is actually failing in the industry for which it was designed? This is a very fair question to ask. The new beautiful and beasty machine has caused a wide range of reactions in the industry—from the hooray’s of Apple fanboys to the detailed sharp criticism of highend studio based professionals in the world’s of 3D, engineering and architecture,” Frausto-Robledo writes. “[Or] it is possible Shimpi may have taken a position at Apple to lead a new type of publication of some sort…one that focuses on the types of users Shimpi already is good at serving: professionals and enthusiasts.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Apple hires tech blogger Anand Lal Shimpi – September 1, 2014
One of the biggest issues I hear about is not being to upgrade items as display cards memory and hard drives. Many corps do not want to make a big investment and not having the ability to do incremental upgrades
I’ve worked for lots of very large corps and hardly ever seen a hardware component upgrade. It’s just not done – they tend replace the entire unit with whatever the current corp standard now is.
This kind of nonsense sounds like what you’d expect from a FUD merchant blindly repeating an old line typically used by IT doofuses.
Fair question to ask? this guy is a moron.. How do you equate the hiring of this guy from Anandtech to the Mac Pro, how do you get there? Answer, you really can’t..
It is like shooting yourself in the head to hire a PC programmer to work for apple. You don’t reward failure!
Wow: That’s some sort of stretch there, Anthony Frausto-Robledo.
Since you admit this all complete conjecture, just an idea, here’s a completely different one:
What if Apple is deciding to take the gloves off and produce a real hobbyist computer with killer specs and they want a guy like Anand Shimpi to be the one who deals out deep technical explanation for the geeks that want to build up from the bare metal?
As you said in your closing thoughts, “These are just ideas.”
Spot on..Seems like the author intention was just to usethis as an excuse to bash the pro.
We all know what the Apple fanboys think about the new MacPro.
But what the top legitimate pro users say negatively speaks volumes about the tone-deaf gadget sales Apple juggernaut.
I don’t understand why they have iTuned out the loyal pro base foundation of Apple since day one of the Macintosh.
Certainly a company of this size could do it all and better than anyone.
Are you saying Apple had a “pro” following for the Apple ][?
He may be contrarian, but he did not go that far. The Apple ][ was not a Macintosh.
I know. He said “from day one of the Macintosh.” So how could Apple have “iTuned out a loyal pro base foundation” of something that didn’t exist?
I was considering asking about the Macintosh II series, especially the 6-slot variety, that came along after “day one of the Macintosh” but thought I’d just await his reply to see if I was misunderstanding what he was trying to say. The IIfx with the 8•24GC card was flipping fast for the day!
Hello?
30 years ago this month on the first Macintosh home screen in 1984.
The pro community bought these high priced machines and have been unwavering in their support for decades.
My point is, not so much the last couple of years. iWeb gone. Final Cut Pro crippled. Aperture killed. Expansion in the beautiful new MacPro cylindrical tower relegated to external devices with wires and footprints all over the desktop.
I still have my IIfx and it works. eBay when I retire.
My point is Apple has shorted the pro community the last few years. And anyone that disagrees with that statement is NOT a pro user.
Capish?
Hey, I’ve been a member of the “pro” community for 25 years, and I’m happy with Apple. My 27-inch iMac makes one hell of a Pro computer…
An iMac is not a pro computer. Period.
It never works to attempt to short-circuit debate by saying that anyone who disagrees with you is therefore not a part of the community you are speaking for.
And no, I’m sorry, the original Macintosh was not a pro computer. And for all the exact same reasons “pros” have held that the current Mac Pro is not a a pro machine: Lack of customizability with beefier components than Apple is willing to spec/test/sell.
I still have my 128K, btw. I was given it by the man who needed me to program Macs for his business that year. I still make my living programming Macs and iOS, so we can let the gallery decide whether or not I qualify for a “pro” user — because although I also produce video with Final Cut Pro X and Bluray DVDs for income, I don’t consider my needs the same as someone who has to produce every day on deadline.
I dearly wish the current Mac Pro could be configured with Nvidia cards because the open source Blender 3D modeling & animation package is optimized for Nvidia cards, claiming buggy support by AMD preclude their doing the engineering work to take advantage of their GPUs.
Here’s a thought.
Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Shimpi has seen the writing on the wall and has chosen to hitch his wagon to the only PC company that still has Game in this world.
SS Microsoft hit that iceberg long ago and is listing very badly these days.
Anand Shimpi’s goodbye post on his website states that he has been transitioning away from his editorial duties for quite some time now, in preparation for this move. So that implies that what we’ve been reading on his website has mostly, if not all, has been written or editored by others. So the site isn’t shutting down, nor will there be a ‘drop in quality’ after today. It sounds as if he’s left Anandtech in good hands.
As for the reason(s) for the move to Apple, it depends whether his work will be visible or invisible to us. If we get to hear about it, then possibly he will resurface as a newsletter editor, or more likely in PR, promoting Apple’s new Enterprise partnership with IBM to business and Government. If he’s kept off the front lines, then indeed his role could be as an advisor for new and existing products.
Failing Mac Pro?
weird that for months they couldn’t even keep up with the orders …
the ‘failure’ also won a whole bunch of editor’s choice etc awards.
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Personally I suspect Anand Shimpi’s real strength is not engineering good as he is at it (there are tons of super talented engineers at Apple) but COMMUNICATION and possibly collating facts, identifying trends. He’s able to explain complex tech stuff and weed out what is important.
Maybe he’s there as part of sort of think tank to identify what is coming around the curve (which Jobs used to be incredibly good at) and perhaps Shimpi is also there to guide, make comprehensible complex tech stuff to new hires like Paul Deneve , Ahrendts, Dr Dre who are from other disciplines ?
Nail on head. successfully hit.
Apple is becoming more open and communicating more to their developers. He’s the equivalent of what Microsoft calls product evangelists.
Apple can’t hide hardware like it used to. Every move is under super-close scrutiny and on the front-page of the internets right away. Anand is a reassuring face to the tinkerers and the people who are crying for Apple to be more open. The Woz’s of the world.
Apple’s success under Steve Jobs was enhanced by secrecy. A company that tries super super hard to be secret will ultimately fail… because it just makes the information more valuable to leak. It makes it more juicy for technology journalists.
I suspect Anand is going to be a voice for the open-it-up community that the community trusts. These are the guys that end up building the apps, remember.
While Apple relied on the fact that developers made more money on iOS to build apps, ultimately, Apple’s core focus is on making people happy with products. That includes developers and it’s why Swift is a major breakthrough.
Apple is opening up, in a measured way.
While they will still employ secrecy to a point, I doubt they will rely on it.
Hey, In this age of “Fact-Free Talking Heads” – here’s an original idea… Why doesn’t someone ASK him?
Anand was a god to PC heads back in the day at least. I’ve always found his analysis good and informative.
Geniuses at the Apple Stores nowadays seem more like the classical windows dudes, but wearing an apple logo. Definitely not the true geniuses from back in the day.
Maybe Anand has been brought in to try to corral his flock and move them forward. He is probably one of the few that can speak their language!