“While HP’s name has been coming up in all the media concerning GOP presidential hopeful, Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO, the famed Silicon Valley tech company has come out swing in a bold attack on Apple’s professional Mac market—directly targeting the controversial Mac Pro introduced in 2013,” Anthony Frausto-Robledo writes for Architosh.
“Without mentioning any kind of market data or any official information of any kind, HP comes out with bold assertion that — ‘the days of Mac Pro being the default tool for creative professionals are coming to an end,'” Frausto-Robledo writes. “So reads these striking words in an HP marketing advert sent to Architosh’s attention. In blue type face the advert, which was sent via marketing email and is replicated on the website directly, continues… ‘See why the pros are moving from Mac to Z’ …as in HP’s Z-line workstations, which include all-in-one designs very competitive to Apple’s popular iMacs.”
“Apple’s Mac Pro was apparently the missing child left out of the Mac family portrait on Apple’s August-timed update to its key Mac product page. Meanwhile, key rumor sites have been pondering when exactly Apple would update the new Mac Pro itself, with conjectures of a WWDC 2015 time-frame that flew past,” Frausto-Robledo writes. “At Apple’s recent September Event, with Apple’s announcement of the new iPad Pro — a product also aimed at professional creatives as well as Apple’s enterprise aspirations—the Mac Pro failed to see any update.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A little birdy tells us that professional Mac users in the market for a new Mac Pro are going to be very happy early next year.
SEE ALSO:
50,000,000 pixels: Apple’s Mac Pro powers six 4K displays (with video) – August 31, 2015
Apple may be prepping a Mac Pro refresh for early 2016 – August 25, 2015
What’s next for Mac Pro graphics cards? – August 13, 2014
First impressions: Apple’s new Mac Pro – June 20, 2014
Hardware.Info reviews Apple’s Mac Pro: Revolutionary, Apple reinvents the workstation – June 17, 2014
Houston Chronicle reviews Apple Mac Pro: Unmatched by any Windows system – March 12, 2014
Review: Apple’s $3999 6-core Mac Pro is an impressive computer – February 26, 2014
Ars Technica pro reviews Apple’s 2013 Mac Pro: Powerful, but it isn’t always a clear upgrade – January 28, 2014
T3 Mac Pro review: Unboxing, hands-on, and first impressions – December 20, 2013
ITProPortal reviews Apple’s Mac Pro: One of the best premium desktops we’ve ever tested – January 14, 2014
PC Magazine reviews Apple’s Mac Pro: Stunning, astonishing, Editors’ Choice – December 27, 2013
The New York Times reviews Apple’s Mac Pro: Deeply futuristic; extremely, ridiculously fast and powerful – December 26, 2013
The Verge reviews Apple’s new Mac Pro: Unlike anything the PC industry’s ever seen – December 23, 2013
Engadget reviews Apple’s new Mac Pro: In a league of its own – December 23, 2013
The first 24 hours with Apple’s new Mac Pro and Final Cut Pro X 10.1 (with video) – December 20, 2013
T3 Mac Pro review: Unboxing, hands-on, and first impressions – December 20, 2013
Apple’s powerful new Mac Pro a good value; far from the most expensive high-end Mac or high-end PCs – December 20, 2013
CNET hands on: Apple’s radically reimagined Mac Pro is a powerhouse performer – December 20, 2013
If Apple isn’t going to step up it’s Mac Pro game, HP would probably be the best choice to license MacOS to for that high end workstations and servers. I’d love to legally run multiple MacOS server VMs on HP Servers… rather than the ubuntu stuff I have to run today.
Don’t listen to the down votes. I write engineering software and the Mac Pro is unusable for me.
– No support for 4 GPUs
– No support for Nvidia Tesla compute GPUs
– No support for Nvidia CUDA
– GPU upgradability handicapped by non-standard form factor
The Mac Pro is a GREAT machine. It is just not a Pro machines.
I would love to buy a real Mac Pro again.
I hear you too. Likewise, it would be nice to have some pro software commitment from Apple to go with it instead of feeling like anything “pro” from Apple is a set up for abandonment I’m looking at you Aperture, FCP, QuickTime Pro, etc…
It’s not a gamer’s machine either. Even a maxed out $9600 Mac Pro can’t come close to a PC from OriginPC of similar value in gaming performance. The video cards alone are a large part of the problem, they aren’t optimized for gaming and don’t even fit the minimum requirements for an Oculus Rift, no Mac (regardless of customization) can meet the minimum specs. Not to mention the Mac Pro’s processor options are designed for work not fun, multi-threading options of high core-count are useless in gaming. I’d prefer an i7 6700k Skylake processor and two GTX 980-ti GPU’s any day over even a maxed out Mac Pro.
The only other Mac that comes close to Oculus Rift required specs is the latest maxed out iMac, and it just barely meets the internal specs, but still lacks the required HDMI 1.3 direct output.
Indeed. If Apple wants to use the word “pro” in a product name, then it better have the GPU to back up the claim. The Mac Pro trashcan does not.
Next year HDMI 1.3 will be completely obsolete and people who work their machines hard will need HDMI 2. Why didn’t Apple think ahead?
While there are many legitimate complaints that you can make about the Mac Pro, saying Apple did not think ahead and include HDMI 2.0 is just plain idiotic. HDMI 2.0 wasn’t even finalized until September 2013. After such a spec is finalized it usually takes a few months for system designs and chips to be available to support that spec. This left ZERO time for Apple to include HDMI 2.0 in a 2013 Mac Pro.
You could claim they should have included HDMI 1.4 as that spec was available and chips that support it were available as far back as 2009.
“…multi-threading options of high core-count are useless in gaming…”
This hardly sounds like a criticism on the Mac Pro.
If games would be optimized to optimally multi-thread, the picture would actually come out in favor of the Mac Pro.
If you want a gaming machine, don’t complain about Mac’s pro offerings.
Playing games is entertainment.
“Pro” is short for “professional” – getting stuff done.
Commenters here are mixing up entertainment machines with machines designed for professional use.
A high cost, high end computer should be flexible enough to do either. Flexibility is no longer in Apple’s vocabulary.
Apple’s Mac Pro is not for people who need those elements.
Extremely few people NEED 4 Tesla engines and those that do will often choose to go with Nvidia’s Visual Compute Appliance.
Apple’s Mac Pro is targeted at professional users who do not NEED such a high end system but do need the capabilities of many cores and multiple high end GPUs. Very few professionals cannot get by with the two D700s in the top of the line Mac Pro.
And, as far as buying a “real Mac Pro again”, when did the Mac ever in recent memory support four concurrent, high end GPUs? The answer is NEVER. (If you go back to the Mac IIfx and prior you could get them to work with six GPUs, but not if you pushed those GPUs to the ragged edge and we’re talking 25 years ago and 68040/68882 processors at that!)
Apple truly missed the target with the Mac Pro “trashcan” computer. HP has good reason to target this market segment because it is unlikely Apple will reframe from developing late-to-market, “designer” computers for the progressional market.
It is really a shame, because I know Apple could produce a fantastic computer for that market segment.
Apple would honestly be better off taking the prior industrial Mac Pro design and just updating the CPU, memory and disk.
Fire the fashion designers Apple, hire some real engineers.
With 6 – count, 5K monitors, it’s a proven fact that the MacPro is not at the end of its rope. It has the chops to do the job, but early on was missunderstood, because it tosses out the old idea of what upgrading a system looks like. HP’s drive for blood will be its own, running across the floor.
Please look away it’s disturbing.
But can it handle 2 screens of 4K gaming at 180fps? Hell no it cannot.
It is called Mac Pro. Not Mac gamer. It is not designed to be used as a toy.
Yet one more market Apple has whiffed on. Gamers are happy to spend more money on hardware than the average consumer — easy profits for Apple, if only Cook had a clue.
True that. A gaming machine should have much more in common with a cutting edge workstation than with a consumer Mac. The problem is Apple’s leadership. None of them ever understood engineering or gaming. Does anyone at Apple run Simulink, FEM, professional grade CAD, CFD, or complex graphical tasks of any kind? Clearly not.
Meanwhile HP has taken over workstation market share and Cray is building supercomputers as fast as they can to keep up with demand. For how much MDN seems to think Apple doesn’t care about market share, it seems that is exactly what Cook is doing — focusing solely on iOS market share. He has given zero attention to Mac hardware that professionals want and need and nobody in the blogosphere seemed to notice that Mac Pro market share went from ~5% to ~0%.
Enjoy your Apple Watch and iOS toys, Drone Consumers.
Creators and Engineers, petition Apple if you want to be served.
Haven’t you noticed that Apple is currently concentrating on form over function? The Bang and Olufsen trash can Mac Pro is cool looking but not particularly useful to professionals. The new MacBook is cute but the low power CPU and single external USB bus limits this machine to light duty chores like internet, email, social media and light professional tasks like word processing and simple spreadsheets. iMacs are impossible to open, Mac Minis have been lobotomized, etc.
If HP can build a better Mac then I say let them. Apple should be licensing OS X these days… it’s not like last time when the Mac was Apple’s major source of income, iDevices make more cash for Apple by a wide margin. If Apple is unwilling to build a Mac for those of us who dislike the limitations on upgradability and expandability that Apple is currently imposing, let someone else have a crack at it. HP isn’t a bad choice, I’ve used their systems at work and the only thing I disliked about them was the OS they ran.
I’m running multiple virtual machines serving media and doing media production at the same time without a hiccup. Love my Mac Pro – a professional (I make money with the machine).
The market size is negligible. Half of them are on consoles. There is really no financial justification to spend time and effort.Even with the visual pro market, they still sell marginal numbers.
Radiologists, engineers, scientists and others need Graphics Cards that greatly exceed the specs of consumer or gaming hardware. The last real Mac Pro handled these easily, but the Mac Mini Pro HTPC cannot. Thanks Jony, go design a watch or something.
Jony Ive needs to go design watches or fly somewhere on his jet and leave HW alone. We do not need thinner hardware- we need better hardware.
I couldn’t give a shit less about how thin the bezel of the iMac is, but do are about the inability to upgrade memory on most Macs, the inability to get a decent GPU, the inability to add hardware without a spaghetti bowl of cables and wall warts.
Can HP? What does that even look like?
It sure as hell can, look into the Oculus Rift and you’ll see.
Oculus Rift is right up there with 3D TV. This is not something Apple gave up as much as it is a new market that isn’t mature and we are still trying to understand the underlying problems it has. This isn’t blood, it’s red ink, on a spreadsheet.
Apple has its own patents in this field, they are not blatantly ignoring it. It is just annoying that a Mac simply can’t handle it at all.
While the first iteration VR/AR in its primitive infancy, the future is within realms of virtual and alternate reality.
Is it a future or a distraction? I would think the ability to handle the job, is more to limits in programming support and not specificity the hardware. Apple is known to have less than “best in class” video drivers. I see VR in the same place as 3D gaming 15 years ago. A lot has to settle, before Apple commits to playing along.
Keep complaining that the Mac Pro is not aimed at gamers, but IT NEVER WAS DESIGNED FOR THEM. Get over it and move on.
They are offering machines with professional options that Apple no longer offers. How can they go wrong?
If HP were copying Apple’s trashcan Mac Pro they would be hosed, since obviously, if that is all you need then Apple’s hardware and Mac OS are the best.
But they are aiming for the market Mac Pro used serve but Apple has pulled back from.
Apple seems to forget that the vast majority of the world’s wealth is held by corporations, not consumers. That wealth would be happily and wisely spent on any hardware and software that offers a better value that what is used today. IT geeks are not stupid. But with Apple refusing to sell what the market demands, Apple keeps shooting itself in the foot. The reason Apple isn’t a major player in pro IT is because Cook is hollowing out the engineering leadership at Apple and replacing it with consumer-first fashion designers. When the fashion market is saturated, what are you going to do Cook? HP will happily build high-margin, high-value servers and workstations since Apple can’t/won’t. Dumb move, Apple. It’s embarassing when you have to run your enterprise on HP Servers and the Amazon cloud. But that”s the new Apple.
Yehhhhhh, Mike. They must be doing sooooo terribly from having made such a terrible mistake.
By the way, how large a company do you run, that you are so wise in the ways of business?
Sean, that’s rather poor form for a discussion.
Why would you ever want to throw all your eggs in one basket? You don’t have to be a business genius to see the risks in that.
Mike may not appreciate iOS, but he’s right in that iOS wouldn’t be much without OS X. Fashion is fickle and Apple can very easily fall out of favor if all it offers is style over substance. That’s what I’m seeing way too much of from Cupertino. Cook absolutely needs to focus more on business computers and workstations if he wants to ride out future economic cycles.
Also, let’s face it — all the money Apple blew on stuff like Beats and stock buybacks has accomplished absolutely nothing. Apple Music is a disaster and Wall Street still doesn’t see Cook doing anything exciting with Apple’s cash hoard. If Cook wanted to keep big investors interested, he’d be rolling out more exciting updates to ALL product lines, not just iPhones and iPads.
Mike gives little or nothing to discuss… mostly snarky comments and bluster… plenty of dismissive hyperbole presented as fact.
And your own, “Cook absolutely needs to focus more on business computers and workstations if he wants to ride out future economic cycles.” Absolutely? Really? Would that be like how Microsoft has a huge focus on business and it’s serving them so well?
“if all it offers is style over substance”. Why even formulate such a sentence that is so very far from reality? Google, Samsung and every computer and phone maker attempt to emulate Apple. Apple has more substance than the rest of both industries put together.
What is it that the mac pulled back from? What professional options? Square Box with slots? Is that at the core? TB2 has proven very nicely to make slots and boxes redundant.
Have you priced expansion chassis? If You depend on them and/or external storage, your pretty black cylinder will be surrounded by mismatched expensive square boxes and tangles of expensive cables. The current Mac Pro hasn’t been upgraded in two years and real Pro machines need to be easily modified to make use of the latest hardware. Flexibility is also a major concern. The trashcan had certain advantages that were completely overshadowed by it’s plethora of disadvantages. It’s primary function was to boost Jony Ive’s already enormous ego, and thats a particularly pathetic excuse to release a crippled computer.
Even at its highest BTO option, it still depends on two year old internals and requires expansion chassis and external storage, rendering it a mess on desks. It’s a serious step backwards, all for the sake of style.
I hope it goes the way of the Cube, it’ll make a nice planter one day.
Actually it’s a lot like the cube, isn’t it.
Could expansion chassis be over priced?
Apple will never ever license Mac OS again. They are done with that. I suppose they will live and learn.
I would think a proper video production facility would have a SAN and simply hook up over thunderbolt to a local high speed network. No boxes hanging around because all that stuff is in the computer room.
I get that this is Jony’s thing, but again if the major complaint is about not being able to stick things inside of it, then that’s just a way of thinking, that Jony and Apple feel could be different. As far as two year old innards. That has been an Apple thing with the first Mac Pro. They are never cutting edge, from year to year.
Apple tends to leap and bound, trickle out updates, the leap again. So the complaint is, what? You want Apple to be different than what they have been? I get it that Apple has had slots and boxes, going back literally to Apple II, and now they don’t. The frustration is, how do I connect slots and boxes to a round cylinder?
Maybe the simple answer is, you don’t. And the follow up question, what is it about your job that can’t be done with the current configuration of the Mac Pro? What was different from today, that made the Mac Pro better, two years ago? Is the notion of the lack of flexibility a figment of our own imaginations?
External storage is not expensive. If the $20 price difference between a bare drive and one in an enclosure is gonna bust your budget, you’re not in the market for a pro machine anyway. Even RAID boxes can be quite affordable and make up a rather small fraction of a complete pro workstation. Heck, I run my photography business on a 13″ MBP, and even I have two RAIDs.
External storage can be cheap, I’m talking about expansion chassis, the boxes that connect to thunderbolt ports and accept expansion cards that would normally plug into a slot on a computer’s motherboard. A quick look shows prices between $300 and $1000 depending on their capabilities. These are the slots that Jony left out of the Trashcan Pro because it looks cooler without them. The fact that a cylindrical computer surrounded by a bunch of boxes amidst a nest of cables doesn’t look very stylish and adds significant cost never seemed to enter his one track mind.
Yes, as a Mac Pro user I can see the attraction. The Mac Pro works okay, if you ignore Yosemite’s networking issues (I had to buy an Ethernet cable which is now draped around the room) but the Mac Pro form factor is a triumph of design over functionality and is a real nuisance in everyday operation.
Firstly, the power switch is very hard to find and usually involves spinning the Mac Pro around to eyeball the tiny power switch. Cables tend to fall out when you do this.
Plugging anything in is a pain – the connections are either all at the back or the Mac Pro sits at the back of all the drives so is hard to reach,
Nothing sits nicely with this cylindrical shape. A card reader dangles from a port at the back and cannot be velcro’d in place on the chassis.
It looks great on the Apple website, before you plug anything in. On my desk it is a shambles of accessories, cables and external storage. Plugging anything in often means dislodging other cables.
Less design, more function, might keep users in the Mac environment, but Apple today is SO unfocused on actual work with their products (as opposed to play) that an HP/Windows offering looks increasingly attractive – and as a Mac convert since 2002 I never ever thought I would say that.
Mail issues, secret junk mail filters, silly iCloud restrictions, secret mail deletion, dumbing down of Pages, pathetic functionality in Numbers and the calamitous networking problems of Yosemite add up to a real opportunity for HP and Microsoft.
Apple won’t care probably. IPhone sales will more than make up for the loss of professional Mac users.
But, honestly, I want to work on kit that is designed by people who actually work on it. That’s not the case at Apple today.
But stylish computers make Jony Ive happy. Shouldn’t that count for something? 😉
Personally I see the new Mac Pro as a very pretty travesty. Their current attitudes on expandability and upgradability as a slap in the face to all of us who stayed loyal to MacOS during the lean years. It seems that Apple is actively trying to alienate Mac users and it’s working.
“It seems that Apple is actively trying to alienate Mac users and it’s working.”
What a profoundly stupid, stupid thing to say.
If you don’t literally mean it, say what you actually mean.
If you do mean it, you’re a lunatic. OBVIOUSLY, Apple does not want to alienate the people who pay all their wages. However, that does not mean that 100% of the people can be pleased 100% of the time — and that is fine.
Apple doesn’t seem to be aiming to please anyone other than low to mid level users that have no interest in upgrading their systems or using them to their full capabilities. I’ve had 3 Mac laptops since 2011. the ’11 Air, the ’12 rMBP which Apple replaced with a ’14 rMBP after 6 trips back to Apple for mostly heat related problems. These recent Macs all had one thing in common, the top-of-the-line BTO options all had a maximum available complement of RAM equal to half of what the CPU could support. Why not 8GB in the Air or 32 in the rMBPs? I’d have paid the price.
Why is the current highest end Mac Mini significantly slower than the one introduced in 2012?
iMacs are almost impossible to upgrade or repair and the trashcan pro has had no updates.
Apple is finally churning out the non-upgradeable appliances the detractors have been falsely accusing Apple of building for years.
Do I think this is deliberate? It could be. Very little of Apple’s profit comes from Macs. They’d probably be happier and more profitable if Macs and OS X went away, that way they could concentrate on iOS stuff and iTunes for Windows.
I’m considering a Windows system when it comes time to upgrade in a few years and I’ve been using solely Apple systems at home for over 30 years. Whether Apple is doing this on purpose or not is irrelevant, it’s happening.
And by the way, iDevices pay their wages, Macs probably pay for lunch.
“Do I think this is deliberate? It could be.”
The biggest company on the planet doesn’t need to play childish games or spend huge amounts of money and time pretending to produce products that are actually crap. If they wanted to axe the Mac, they’d just do it.
I wonder, if the products have so many terrible faults why Apple’s profits continue to grow while the rest of the computer makers flounder.
There are a number of reasons Macs are more successful than other makers: OS X. No one else supports OS X so there’s no competition to lower prices or take customers. Quality. Regardless of their many and increasing faults, Apple uses higher quality components and the computers tend to last longer. Where the rabble of Windows clones need to cut corners wherever possible, Apple doesn’t have to.
Unfortunately while Apple is giving with one hand, it’s taking away with the other. There are users who are now being forced into doing a balancing act when this problem never existed before, and the wrong thing(s) taken away will cause them to fall into the other camp. I think Apple is aware of this and feels it’s an acceptable business decision. They dropped the Xserve, made the Mac Pro irrelevant, made the iMac essentially unrepairable, made Mac Minis less powerful and are making laptops less expandable and their professional applications are either vanishing or getting less professional to bring them into parity with their iOS counterparts.
Just look at the Apple II, they didn’t kill it off in one fell swoop, they killed it off over a number of years. Why? They had the Mac to replace it. Now their long term strategy might be to replace the Mac with iOS devices. You have to admit that it’s following a similar pattern.
If Apple is convinced the future is in handheld and wearable devices, and their profit margins prove this to be true, sooner or later the Mac may be history. If iOS gets a user accessible file system and access to external storage devices, count on it.
Well, Apple is a business and there is a fundamental business principle that many here and many in big business don’t seem to know — do not try to be all things to all people.
And re “sooner or later the Mac may be history”…
– In a very real sense, so what? OS 1-9 has also gone.
But if the Mac OS goes at some point, it has to be succeeded by something better. There are large numbers of people who do work that cannot happen on tiny screens.
– And also, “may be”… yehh, let’s get all in a tizzy about something that may or may not happen, and if it does happen may (or may not) be supplanted by something that may (or may not) be much better.
I’m not trying to get anyone in a tizzy, I’m simply pointing out similarities between occurrences three decades apart. If Apple decides iOS is far more profitable than OS X, then we can see less attention paid to the less profitable system. We seem to be observing this now. It’s difficult to avoid extrapolating past history to current and future occurrences.
Not sure I understand the headline of HP going after Mac Pro.. For Windows and Linus applications, these workstations are probably better choice. For OSX applications, not so much.
Lots of pro apps I use are available on Mac, Windows and Linux.
But only on Windows and Linux can I get the GPU power to run the apps at full speed. So I develop on a MacBook but actually run my software on a Windows box that blows the trashcan away.
I would much rather have a real “Pro” Mac.
As a designer, I can see taking the guts of the MacPro and putting it in a rectangular box that has NAS 2.5″ drive slots on one end (a whole bunch) and then PCI slots on the other end, with cable attachments down low on both of the narrow ends.
Nothing stops Apple from making the “Mega Mac Pro.”
I propose instead that Apple offer 3 headless Mac desktop model lines:
1) Mac Mini. Updated from today, no server model.
2) Mac — similar to current cylindrical Mac Pro model but updated with i5 and i7 chipsets and upgradeable GPU and RAM, substantial price drop. Make it more capable than iMacs with desktop-grade hardware.
3) all-new Mac Pro tower, with 4 hot swappable 3.5″ drive bays, server model, and complete user configurabiliy and upgradeability. Make it future proof and make it the best long-term value in enterprise computing. Demonstrate sustained advertising and support, with a serious commitment to application developers over the long term. Then corporate sales would come back.
As long as Apple continues to shun professional users with inferior, hard and expensive to configure hardware and dumbed down software, then Apple will continue to lose enterprise computing.
A Pro machine needs to have its specs updated more than once every two years. The current Mac Pro has internals that are two years old but it is still selling for the same price today that it was two years ago. Ridiculous.
Was that blood from Cook’s eyes that H-P smelled?
Or….
I’ve been been buying top of the line Macs since before they were “Pro” models, beginning with the Mac Plus in ’85 (LOL, I know). So, let’s say, instead, since the Mac IIfx in 1990. I’ve eagerly awaited the new Pro models. Didn’t buy one every year, but when I bought a Mac it was a top line Pro model. Not the cylinder. For all it’s vaunted silence and powerful internals, I have yet to operate a professional computer without adding a hodgepodge of upgraded components, more storage, external peripheral, etc. A Pro machine needs to be flexible, and easily customized to many individual needs. The current Mac Pro fails at this, for many reasons already noted above. The Mac Pro is a beautiful device, but its cleverness gets in the way of utility. Give me a box that can run 24/7, forever. Give me upgradable and repairable components. Give me a reduced size “Cheese Grater” type Mac Pro and I will be comfortable investing in one again.
As for MDN’s little birdy hint of something on this front coming next Spring, I think it would behoove Apple to open the kimono. I doubt if Apple can freeze the sales of the current Mac Pro any more than it already is. But they could certainly freeze more of the Mac Pro market from jumping ship if they gave us a reason to believe they’ve had a reality check and will be serving up something more appropriate soon.
Enterprise admins don’t want the heat that comes with bringing an undependable IMAP implementation to their users. Until this is fixed, as Federighi and Cook promised it would be three years ago, Apple is going nowhere in the enterprise.
Blame GOOGLE for screwing up their IMAP implementation. That’s a very old issue at this point. I’m unaware of Apple having screwed up actual standard IMAP.
As for Apple and the enterprise, they’re trying yet-again with IBM and Cisco. We’ll see how it goes. There are many issues in the enterprise that have repeatedly beaten down Apple attempts over the decades. To say that Apple is ‘going nowhere’ in the enterprise is very silly at this point. I point to the iPad and iPhone. Mac continues to shove its way into the Enterprise, whether clueless IT personnel like it or not. But there’s a long way to go to overthrow the MS trash.
A small open source company like Airmail gets IMAP to work reliably; Apple Mail does not. Cook and Federighi promised a fix and have not delivered. And this is not just limited to google.
Thanks for letting me know. I’ve only read about what Google did to IMAP and heart complaints about dealing with Gmail. It’s interesting how this parallels Apple dragging out compatibility with Windows networking. 🙁
Re MDN take – I hope the little birdy saw something more professional than a trashcan with a flock of dongles living around it. I’ve been ready to upgrade my 2008 Mac Pro to a REAL pro machine for a few years now.
2010 Mac Pro here. Maxed the memory, using an Airport Express as a wireless bridge (via Ethernet) to get faster than G spec WiFi, added USB 3/eSATA Card, upgraded Graphics card, SSDs for OS, upgraded optical drive.
It is time for a new tower and I have they money, just nothing decent to buy. The trashcan was a nice exercise, but is not a serious pro machine for many people.
Maybe the Mac is not the bulk of the company’s income anymore, but profits from the Mac Pro line financed all the stuff that made Apple the monster it is today. They should take care of the market that took care of them when they needed it.
I’m enjoying reading the comments on our article today at Architosh. Thanks for reading guys…(gals too!). Perhaps Apple has something special in the works to address the “pro” market? Yet, this wouldn’t explain that is it nearly impossible to find/discover Apple’s own pro apps on its website. Try finding them without using Search.
Their pull-back from their pro apps is the biggest indicator that something isn’t quite normal. On the flip side, Mac sales are at all-time highs on quarterly basis, and Y-o-Y percentage gains over PCs (which are declining). This is simply not the time for Apple to be throttling back unless they are heading in a special direction (e.g.: iOS-OS X operating system integration) and are working on machines for that direction.
The day Apple unites iOS and Mac OS X is the day I stop buying Apple products. iOS is not for me, and I’m getting sick of Apple dumbing down OS X. They are different OSes designed for entirely different purposes, and never should be combined in any way.
Moreover, you don’t need an iPad Pro to have an awesome graphical input device for a Mac. All you need is competition for Wacom, which Apple could have done without the need for iOS and the annoying iCloud. Just make a sketchboard that allows for natural pen/ drawing input. There are many on the market. For the best collaboration, it’d be better to be bigger and NOT battery powered. Just plug it into a Mac and use all the power that you need to get the job done. Forcing every product to align to the creaky limiting iCloud or to iOS is undermining Apple’s ability to compete in business markets. That’s why the iPad didn’t have staying power — because it simply can’t replace a proper Mac. A chips on a batter do not outperform Intel chips plugged into a wall. Sorry, ain’t gonna happen unless Apple keeps screwing up its Mac product development.
Apple has forgotten about it’s roots… The professional content creators… It used to only be about pros, now it’s not even a secondary concern… Laptops 🙁 RIP 17″ MBP…
“pros are moving from Mac to Z’”
Not even HP can bring themselves to saying the word “Windows”
Yet Windows is becoming more compelling as OS X becomes less. OS X is still the better OS, especially for people without IT departments to call upon, but the gap is narrowing.
1) Apple some people like the Cylindrical MacPro so keep that but up grade it more frequently
2) Some want more traditional expansion, so maybe a MacPro CLASSIC? there was an iPod classic for a long time…
(not much R&D cost needed for it ).
3) Many want a mid tower between the $500 mac Mini and the $3000 Mac Pro.
the current Mac pro comes with a tiny 256 GB drive (that’s a GIANT iPOD not a pro machine) so by the time it’s upgraded it’s like $4000.
A Mid tower will have something like : one workstation multicore processor, upgradable Video card, upgradable ram.
That will get a lot of PC users who want to keep their monitors and not get an iMac.
(More users = more developers = more software like productivity, games etc)
4) PLEASE up the Mac Advertising. No serious Mac campaigns since Mac PC guy more than half a decade ago.
More macs like I said more developers.
Also the stock might go up as big investors now worry that Apple is ‘one product iPhone company’.
You mean the HP that’s laying off another 35,000 employees. That is losing money every quarter for the last 5 years. They said Microsoft would be beating Apple with the Surface. I think not. HP I think not. They can only build boxes like Dell. And you see how well Dell is doing.😉
Actually, no, we don’t know how well Dell is doing. Since it’s a private company, Dell doesn’t have to release its financials.
Apple, on the other hand, is being led by a Wall Street Puppet who cares more about fashion than about creative & power users.
A Wall Street puppet? That I kinda doubt. What drives Cook is probably something besides money. He is very concerned with appearance and making OS X “flavor of the month” though.
This sort of thing doesn’t surprise me. Why shouldn’t people who purchased a Mac Pro, specifically for Apple’s Pro apps like APERTURE, not wonder if Apple is giving up on other products as well. If I were a serious FCPX user I would certainly be planning for the eventual demise of that product. Apple completely destroyed my confidence in what they have planned for professionals by giving up on Aperture. I moved from MS to Mac in 2004 specifically due to Aperture. I used to be a Mac zealot to say the least but now I’m actually open minded about other options since Apple proved they have zero interest in the serious still photography market. They destroyed one of their most enthusiastic sales people on the planet and I know I’m not the only one.
Hate to say it, but you seem to be emotionally unbalanced. Why would you change an entire ecosystem for one product? You act like there are no other apps that even come close to Aperture on the Mac. Yet there are.
Carly Fiorina should buy a new Mac Pro and use it for her personal computer – as an expression of support for her old friend Steve Jobs.
It’s the OS stupid HP! 😉
“…which include all-in-one designs very competitive to Apple’s popular iMacs”
I thought Mac Pros were the marketing target.
Skipping the iMac wannabes… All of the HP Z-Line workstations are of course hobbled with Windows and associated software. The high end machines that ACTUALLY compete with the Mac Pro are the usual ugly Box-O-Gear PCs we’re sadly used to. But you can stuff some major gear in there:
The HP Z8 Workstation can hold up to 36 (!) cores. You can stuff up to 2TB of RAM into it. It holds up to 20 TB of internal storage. It can run at up to 10.4 Teraflops.
AHEM Apple.
Yeah I noticed that too. Why mention iMacs if Mac Pros are what’s in your sights? That can’t be accidental. HP, make up your mind.
Yes, some of us need a box that takes 3rd party cards and would rather have INTERNAL STORAGE rather than be dependent upon the cloud (Hi NSA, hackers and Data Miners) or have a sea of cables and wall warts.
My current Mac Pro has 6 internal HDs 4 in the bays and 2 SSDs in the lower Optical Bay with no extra power lines or cables. Hot swappable. Added USB and eSATA with a simple Card. Memory upgrade takes less than a minute. Can pull and clean out the CPU tray and heatsink in well under 5 minutes.
Try that with the Black Trashcan.
I always think of it as a nuke cooling tower. And yes, I sympathize.
HP should very, very, quietly make sure that OSX could be made to run reliably on certain of their Z-Line workstations. Totally unattributably, nothing to do with us guv etc.
They’d sell them by the truck load…..
They’d have to make a licensing arrangement with Apple to run OS X legally. But… Hackintosh lives on.
The Mac Pro was designed as a fashion statement. For that, it was wilding successful.
As a professional tool, not so much. But it looks cool looking fashionable on your desk. That’s about it.
Real Mac Pros take internal drives, standard cards, are not round and do not start at $3,000.
The Mac Mini Pro DBA the Mac Pro is a nice HTPC, but is not a Pro machine for the enterprise market.
When Apple makes a nice tower I will drive over to Saddle Creek and pick one up. The current thing does not meet my needs- nor do the mini or iMac.