“Apple just missed the perfect opportunity to update the two year-old new Mac Pro. A machine that still ships,” Anthony Frausto-Robledo writes for Architosh. “So Mac users need to get used to one obvious fact — something different is coming our way and we hope, and we hope, it returns back to the basics we crave.”
“With no announcement in Q1 and no hardware at all at this year’s WWDC, it is clear that one of two things is going to happen: [1] Apple will quietly exit the professional computer markets such as film and broadcast, architecture and engineering, 3d animation and special effects, photography and graphics, science and medicine, and audio and music production, et cetera, or [2] Apple will re-introduce a new type of professional Mac in a brand new architecture,” Frausto-Robledo writes. “We are crossing our fingers and praying that Apple doesn’t choose the first option.”
Apple’s Mac Pro
“Apple needs to stop making signature, iconic machines aimed more for the Smithsonian Institute than for actual production uses and start learning their core pro markets and tailor the next pro desktop design to around those needs,” Frausto-Robledo writes. “Let’s hope no hardware at WWDC 2016 portends to something really great come this fall.”
Not true. Steve Jobs announced the G5 Mac Pro or PowerMac at the 2003 WWDC.
2003 WWDC – G5 Mac Pro
2004 WWDC – 30″ Apple Cinema Display
2006 WWDC – Intel Mac Pro
2008 WWDC – iPhone 3G
2009 WWDC – iPhone 3GS
2010 WWDC – iPhone 4
2012 WWDC – Retina MacBook Pro
2013 WWDC – New black donut/garbage can Mac Pro announced
So in fact significant new Mac Pro’s were nearly always introduced at WWDC.
Assuming your list is complete, it is clear that in the last 3 years no new hardware was released. They did announce the Mac Pro in 2013 but it was not released until 6 months later.
So Apple are clearly wanting to focus WWDC on software only. And that makes sense since it is heavily oversubscribed.
Expecting groundbreaking new Mac hardware from Cook is one of the more painful experiences one can endure. The man sells only thin-client computing and has no grasp of the needs of businesses or offline personal computing.
That’s all the hardware Apple introduced at WWDC in the last 13 years? I think you just made grwisher’s point.
Pay attention to my salient point that the hardware we are talking about are Mac Pro’s and every significant upgrade to the Mac Pro was introduced or announced at WWDC. I made my own point thank you.
Did you just write in the iPhones in your list to fill in the 6 year gap for Mac HW? Or are iPhones considered Mac HW now?
Apple’s announced every Mac Pro model at WWDC. That’s his point.
Ok, so the list is of HW announced during the WWDC and not at another Apple event thus gaps in the list and nothing mentioned for the past 2 years at the WWDC since it is a developers conference. So that means the Mac Pro only had 4 model changes in the past 13 years?
The Mac Pro has had there same essential aluminum cheese grater design from the G5 to Intel Mac Pro models or from 2003 to 2012. All the other changes were mostly internal and port changes.
Just goes to show that Apple under Cook has gone completely AWOL with the Mac platform for the last 6 years. Both hardware and software. Unforgivable, Timmy. Completely unforgivable.
But it would be the best place to announce a new professional Mac.
This fall, my hope is to see an “Expandable Mac Pro” even though I realize I dealing in fantasy.
Expandable is different than “upgradable”, which was the old MacPro Box designs of past decades.
Given the long lifespan of components and the frequent need of users to add or upgrade functionality, I seriously think “Stackable” modules could house CPU/RAM, Networking, Graphics, Storage, NAS, UPS, etc.
That way when a user needed to add functionality, he just replaced or added another “module.”
I know they tried it before (Power Computing) and it failed miserably but maybe it’s time for some entrepreneurs to convince Apple to license OSX so they could build top shelf expandable workstations.
When I initially saw the trashcan and heard Schiller’s comment “can’t innovate my ass” I realized how out of touch Apple are with the high end work station user’s needs.
We can only hope, but hope is running out fast. C’mon Apple, LISTEN to your pro market! We hope to bypass the current Mac Pro 2013 as a design iteration aberration and bad idea (for many). You could wow us so easily.
I agree peter. Seems to me it would be very easy for Apple to make a GREAT Mac Pro. For Apple, this is not computer science. I’ve only owned one Mac Pro, a very old, ’02 G4 that still goes strong though slow.
Back when you bought that G4, PowerMacs were over 25% of all Mac sales … but today it is estimated to be 1%.
Yes, during the period while overall Mac sales have doubled, Apple’s pro desktops have declined by more than 80% …
… and it seems utterly bizarre that Apple would ever allow themselves to knowingly lose the top end of any market that they choose to compete in. But that’s what the numbers show.
It was wicked fast back in 2002, and it did not really became any slower (unless you are rendering things, of course, where the machine did become relatively slower).
It’s the new Cube. Beautiful, iconic, and way too niche and handicapped to be useful. They should acknowledge that and just walk away. Maybe they’re still waiting on a return of their investment, but with a continued decrease in virtually non-existent sales that’ll never happen.
Or Jonny Ive could surprise us and come out with the new Mac Pro in a pyramid or spherical shape, now that they’ve done the cube and cylinder.
I agree about the Cube comparisons. Better to correct their mistake for a Mac Pro who’s sales must have plummeted by now for a corrected one pro’s really REALLY want that will sell like hotcakes. Doubtful Apple is worrying about making it’s investment back and should be more concerned with making this market segment happy. I love design for about everything but my pro needs and then the needs (upgradeability, internals, PCIe3 slots) trump all other effete & snooty design considerations. Give us plenty of device options Apple!
Give me a demi MacPro
Half the drive bays—2
Half the memory slots—4
Half the PCI cards—2 (one for graphics)
And don’t fink out on the Firewire ports–every living, breathing creative pro in video and audio has some kind of Firewire peripherals if they have been in business in the last decade.
lol sorry Synth but one thing I can GUARANTEE won’t be on a new MacPro is a Firewire port. Invest in Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters cause that ship has sailed…
Unfortunately, you are correct, but it is still dumb that they abandoned the Firewire ports on their “Pro” machines. Pros have been using FW for at least a decade for every type of A/V
peripheral.
• Eight 3.5″ SAS/SATA 15k/10k/7200rpm on 2 x RAID controllers (both redundant to each other (if desired) or as one array; RAID 5 upward
• Eight memory slots minimum (up to 64/128GB RAM)(future proof)
• Eight expansion slots (most new graphics cards take up two slots these days)(grrrr)
• Four gigabit ethernet ports
• 8 x FireWire 400/800
• Two 4/8GB Fibre Channel Slots (optional)(legacy xRAID)
• Two InfiniBand ports (very optional)
Design brief: Jam that lot into a Demi machine with fans, power, etc., Mr. Ive, and make it so futuristic that I want to bow down and worship it. Earn yer money! 😃
Yeah, it was another PowerMac G4 Cube. Style over substance.
Apple should release 2 new Mac Pro models (tower and mini-tower) and make them lightweight aluminum and plastic. The tower model should have with an optical drive bay, dedicated graphics card and additional PCIe slots, while the mini-tower has just a dedicated graphics card. Throw on some USB 3 and USB-C ports, Bluetooth, Wi-fi. Tower starts at $2000, mini-tower starts at $1400-1500 and call it a day.
My Quadra 900 was probably the most productive computer I ever owned.
So was my Quadra 700.
We are with you APPLE! We know you can do it! Amaze us!
Updated G4-sized box with drop down side allowing us to get at the guts. Then sell us a raft of hard drives, specialty cards and nano-blades each of which contains a series of Ax chips that are fast, cool and energy efficient we can slide in by the handful allowing us to create out own mind-blowing, super computer.
The pro market is DEFINITELY with Apple!! And yes, they can most definitely amaze us. I happy to see readers here mostly agree that Apple needs to just move forward and certainly not give up on the pro markets that were its life blood during its darkest moments.
I’ve got $4k burning in my pocket waiting for a new Mac Pro (or a 4 core, i7 mini), Apple… and that burn has been there for at least the last year or so. I like my monitors… don’t want an iMac. I can’t imagine they’d abandon the very groups that helped keep them relevant during the dark times, but Mr. Jobs isn’t around to remind people of that. ugh.
There is a place for a professional-grade modular chassis Mac. And the trash can was not it.
How can Apple design so many brilliant, beautiful *and* functional objects, and then throw all of that out the window to build this monolithic wank-job lump of metal?
It is uninteresting as an object. It is less so as a product.
You know what is interesting? An object that does exactly it’s job, and surprises us with the pleasure of using it.
They built an objet d’art to sit on a shelf, untouched. They forgot that a professional has a hands-on relationship with the tools of their trade. Even when it’s a desktop computer.
On this one Apple was designing form the wrong brief.
There is no real reason Apple could not license Mac OS X but restrict it to certain markets.
I have no doubt Sony, Dell, HP, Lenovo or others would jump at the opportunity to sell Mac towers to enterprise and pro markets. I really don’t give a damn about Jony Ive’s fashion on a workstation.
A modern version of the cheese grater would be fine with me.
What you are describing, is in essence a Hackintosh.
I am glad I went ahead with my Skylake TB3 Hackintosh build, it out performs the Mac Pro Trash can (with the same number of cores) has more ram, more storage, faster network, TB3, USB 3.1 (c ports too), more powerful GPU.. and was much cheaper then the base model Mac Pro Trash can.. and its liquid cooled, so its just as silent. Running 10.11.5 and Protools on it no problems.
There are plenty of people out there with perfectly useful displays (many made by Apple, even) who want more than a mini, but don’t want to buy an iMac. Many of them aren’t even pro users, but they don’t want an iMac (with its all-in-one form and non-upgradeability, it is neither flexible nor repair or eco-friendly). I’ve only had pro machines (the G5 and Mac Pro towers) but never made a penny off of using them. And I don’t want an iMac, because I already have a display.
My current machine is a 2010 Mac Pro, all bays full, with PCI cards. That’s what I want to replace someday, and Apple isn’t offering options. It doesn’t have to be the exact shape, but needs similar features with new components.
And just like the iPhone SE, I think they’d sell surprisingly well, in spite of having an older form.
You’re arriving at a conclusion based on an image. They don’t have gold laptops in the image either, that doesn’t mean they’re going to discontinue the gold color.
It says clearly in the first few sentences the Mac Pro is shipping. Still. Nobody is saying the Mac Pro isn’t available. We just know that, given what is a logical analysis of where we stand today, the current machine, if it was going to get updated at any point, should have been now or before. This machine is done.
That’s what I believe, and because I bought one of them in 2013 and haven’t seen any updates, I suppose I own a future museum piece. I don’t deny the deficiencies cited by others. Their wants and needs were not met. Mine were, as were the needs of an estimated 750,000 others, but that’s few enough that Apple will recalibrate their sustainability equations and send their designers back to the drawing board. That robotic factory in the U.S. could be reprogrammed to stamp out cheese graters, and Apple has to be mulling that over. The one thing I can’t imagine Apple doing is tossing a grenade into the assembled group of Pro users, fragging the lot of them. I’d be standing safely in the distance with my fellow researchers but, you know, we’d still be appalled. And we’d start eyeing Linux or Windows solutions ourselves.
That’s it. Two choices only!!! I love these idiotic analysts. There is at the very least a third option and that’s to simply update the current form factor. Maybe put in a USB-C port. That’s not what I want to see, mind you, but it is another option. There are even a few more I can think of. Where do they find these myopic people?
For a large segment of the scientific computing community, what Apple is doing is just fine. Typically, you get a tricked out iMac and then a compute machine – something from Dell that runs UNIX, and with as many Xeon’s as you can afford. The latter can run about 20K, but it’s a dedicated box that also functions as an excellent space heater.
I have a hackintosh (runs El Capitan, Windows 10, and Linux) that runs an i7-4790k and is ALMOST as fast as a 6 core Mac Pro (2013). Granted it only has a GTX960 in it, but if I wanted to, I could add a “pro” gpu. Point is, for a lot less money, I have an “almost pro” machine. If apple came out with a pro machine that more closely matched my needs, I’d get it. However, until then, I’ll stick with my upgradable hardware.
so let me understand.. you don’t want to pay $8000 for a machine that requires you to hook it up with a lot of cables to make it even START to function as it should? ah. ok
Would have bought a four-core i7 two years ago. Instead, I bought a used 8-core MacPro. Upgraded the graphics card, added a SSD and USB 3.0 and I’m good to go for less than the cost of a current high-end Mini.
Please Apple, make something a desk-top dinosaur wants to buy.
Get over it. No New Mac Pro’s. Period. And I HAVE one! Apple has signaled it is no longer interested in the content creation market, and have focused all of their resources on the consumers. If you can’t shoot it, record it, and edit it on an iPhone, Apple CLEARLY isn’t interested. This shouldn’t be big news to anyone. What Apple DOES think is that the iMac and MacBookPro’s are now powerful enough to do all the content creation that is needed for consumption on iPhones and iPad…. and to some degree, they aren’t too far off the mark.
But that is the point, that thinking is flawed. No, content creators can’t make due with iPhones, iPads and consumer-oriented, thin-enclosure Macs. As an architect myself, writing about tech in my industry for nearly 2 decades, I can tell you Apple is asking professionals to make do with performance limitations. And they are also telling them to go get a PC when key items like VR-headsets can’t run on Macs. Yet, VR/AR will transform the AECO (architecture, engineering, construction, operations) industry.
It was a poor design when it came out. It was another cube, over styled but not solving the engineering issues that make for a great product. Why doesn’t some of apples design team lunch in emeryville with some animators at Pixar? I’m sure they will get an ear full, but will also come away with what pro media creTors and authors need. Before iPod iPad iPhone, heck even before digital hub, pro markets kept Apple going. They will always need better tools, they will always push state of the art. Fashionable design can still be achieved, but function and future expansion should be met first. It can be done. It should be done.
I suggest folks not get their hopes up. Remember the Xserve? I recommended that unit and the associated RAID storage array for one federal office, and it worked rather well for us. Apple ultimately dropped the whole line, suggesting no interest in targeting the back office market. It could well be intending to drop the pro market altogether, suggesting the iMac is “good enough”. The Pro, we should note, is the only Apple product made in the US.
Intel has been releasing some new killer processors (e.g. 24-core Xeon E7-8890 v4 and 10-core i7-6950X). I’d gladly pony up $6K today for a *real* Mac Pro (i.e. tower case with all the drive bays/slots/ports) with that Xeon.
Tim Cook is perfecting the art of missing windows of opportunity.
As a former professional graphic designer and part-time audio/video editor, I hate to say the following, but you pro users need to hear it.
We’re too small a market to cater to anymore.
That’s NOT to say that Apple will never make anything more than caters to pros, but it has been extremely obvious that the Mac Pro didn’t sell well, and that Apple has focused more on pro software, and that the pro-user market not served by the 27-inch 5K iMac is now a fairly tiny market that’s never going to be profitable enough for Apple to make a top priority.
I think with Thunderbolt 3/USB-C now finally fully out, we may get one more Mac Pro (same design as current), or some other pro-aimed hardware, but that’s probably about it. Apple leaving the server market was the smartest thing it ever did in Enterprise — look at where it is now in that sector! — and it gave us the 5K iMac, which is a fabulous machine. The Mac Pro may not be dead, but its coughing up blood, to quote a line from Monty Python.
“the pro-user market not served by the 27-inch 5K iMac is now a fairly tiny market” is probably the key issue. Apple packs in a lot of performance and features at a very appealing price point for most people. Still curious why they wouldn’t at least bump the Mac Pro ports, cpu, and graphics over time.
By the same logic, then Bugatti, McLaren, Lamborghini, Ferrari, etc should stop making supercars because the market is too small.
We hear over and over again here at MDN that market share doesn’t matter, only profitability. Well, every time anyone speaks of professionals, the internet lights up with people asking when Apple is going to get off its ass and deliver the hardware that people want. Clearly there is a market, and these people have money. What is missing is Apple leadership. Cook and company think that the future is thin client computing. He is dead wrong, and if he continues thumbing his nose at creative professionals, then they will abandon Apple altogether.
There will be no reason to get an Apple TV or other consumer gadget when the real work BY NECESSITY needs to be done on a Wintel box. So no iCloud, and definitely no need for Apple TV or Apple Music. All the competing media services are platform agnostic, so why bother dealing with Apple’s limitations?
As professional users go, eventually so does the rest of Apple’s products. Cook doesn’t understand this. He thinks iCloud is the center of the world, and all things Apple must be connected to it at all times.
“…We hear over and over again here at MDN that market share doesn’t matter, only profitability…” And to some extent they are right… however, Apple has focused their resources on content consumers, and indeed, do their best to provide said content. But how that content is CREATED ? Apple is clearly loosing interest very, very, VERY fast.
Frausto-Robledo writes. “Let’s hope no hardware at WWDC 2016 portends to something really great come this fall.”
It is a developer conference Sparky! It is not normal for Apple to announce new hardware at this conference.
Not true. Steve Jobs announced the G5 Mac Pro or PowerMac at the 2003 WWDC.
2003 WWDC – G5 Mac Pro
2004 WWDC – 30″ Apple Cinema Display
2006 WWDC – Intel Mac Pro
2008 WWDC – iPhone 3G
2009 WWDC – iPhone 3GS
2010 WWDC – iPhone 4
2012 WWDC – Retina MacBook Pro
2013 WWDC – New black donut/garbage can Mac Pro announced
So in fact significant new Mac Pro’s were nearly always introduced at WWDC.
Assuming your list is complete, it is clear that in the last 3 years no new hardware was released. They did announce the Mac Pro in 2013 but it was not released until 6 months later.
So Apple are clearly wanting to focus WWDC on software only. And that makes sense since it is heavily oversubscribed.
Expecting groundbreaking new Mac hardware from Cook is one of the more painful experiences one can endure. The man sells only thin-client computing and has no grasp of the needs of businesses or offline personal computing.
That’s all the hardware Apple introduced at WWDC in the last 13 years? I think you just made grwisher’s point.
Pay attention to my salient point that the hardware we are talking about are Mac Pro’s and every significant upgrade to the Mac Pro was introduced or announced at WWDC. I made my own point thank you.
Did you just write in the iPhones in your list to fill in the 6 year gap for Mac HW? Or are iPhones considered Mac HW now?
Apple’s announced every Mac Pro model at WWDC. That’s his point.
Ok, so the list is of HW announced during the WWDC and not at another Apple event thus gaps in the list and nothing mentioned for the past 2 years at the WWDC since it is a developers conference. So that means the Mac Pro only had 4 model changes in the past 13 years?
The Mac Pro has had there same essential aluminum cheese grater design from the G5 to Intel Mac Pro models or from 2003 to 2012. All the other changes were mostly internal and port changes.
Just goes to show that Apple under Cook has gone completely AWOL with the Mac platform for the last 6 years. Both hardware and software. Unforgivable, Timmy. Completely unforgivable.
But it would be the best place to announce a new professional Mac.
This fall, my hope is to see an “Expandable Mac Pro” even though I realize I dealing in fantasy.
Expandable is different than “upgradable”, which was the old MacPro Box designs of past decades.
Given the long lifespan of components and the frequent need of users to add or upgrade functionality, I seriously think “Stackable” modules could house CPU/RAM, Networking, Graphics, Storage, NAS, UPS, etc.
That way when a user needed to add functionality, he just replaced or added another “module.”
One can dream.
Yeah Bo. That’s a brilliant idea. I love it.
It would require innovation and that comes through inspired leadership though.
In other words, dream on.
I know they tried it before (Power Computing) and it failed miserably but maybe it’s time for some entrepreneurs to convince Apple to license OSX so they could build top shelf expandable workstations.
When I initially saw the trashcan and heard Schiller’s comment “can’t innovate my ass” I realized how out of touch Apple are with the high end work station user’s needs.
We can only hope, but hope is running out fast. C’mon Apple, LISTEN to your pro market! We hope to bypass the current Mac Pro 2013 as a design iteration aberration and bad idea (for many). You could wow us so easily.
I agree peter. Seems to me it would be very easy for Apple to make a GREAT Mac Pro. For Apple, this is not computer science. I’ve only owned one Mac Pro, a very old, ’02 G4 that still goes strong though slow.
I’d buy!
Back when you bought that G4, PowerMacs were over 25% of all Mac sales … but today it is estimated to be 1%.
Yes, during the period while overall Mac sales have doubled, Apple’s pro desktops have declined by more than 80% …
… and it seems utterly bizarre that Apple would ever allow themselves to knowingly lose the top end of any market that they choose to compete in. But that’s what the numbers show.
Why you are saying that G4 is slow, though?
It was wicked fast back in 2002, and it did not really became any slower (unless you are rendering things, of course, where the machine did become relatively slower).
It’s the new Cube. Beautiful, iconic, and way too niche and handicapped to be useful. They should acknowledge that and just walk away. Maybe they’re still waiting on a return of their investment, but with a continued decrease in virtually non-existent sales that’ll never happen.
Or Jonny Ive could surprise us and come out with the new Mac Pro in a pyramid or spherical shape, now that they’ve done the cube and cylinder.
I agree about the Cube comparisons. Better to correct their mistake for a Mac Pro who’s sales must have plummeted by now for a corrected one pro’s really REALLY want that will sell like hotcakes. Doubtful Apple is worrying about making it’s investment back and should be more concerned with making this market segment happy. I love design for about everything but my pro needs and then the needs (upgradeability, internals, PCIe3 slots) trump all other effete & snooty design considerations. Give us plenty of device options Apple!
Give me a demi MacPro
Half the drive bays—2
Half the memory slots—4
Half the PCI cards—2 (one for graphics)
And don’t fink out on the Firewire ports–every living, breathing creative pro in video and audio has some kind of Firewire peripherals if they have been in business in the last decade.
I agree – a mini and maxi Mac Pro Tower so all can rejoice throughout the pro market macOS land.
lol sorry Synth but one thing I can GUARANTEE won’t be on a new MacPro is a Firewire port. Invest in Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters cause that ship has sailed…
Unfortunately, you are correct, but it is still dumb that they abandoned the Firewire ports on their “Pro” machines. Pros have been using FW for at least a decade for every type of A/V
peripheral.
Amen synth, amen.
Demi Mac Pro sounds nice, Synth, but:
• Eight 3.5″ SAS/SATA 15k/10k/7200rpm on 2 x RAID controllers (both redundant to each other (if desired) or as one array; RAID 5 upward
• Eight memory slots minimum (up to 64/128GB RAM)(future proof)
• Eight expansion slots (most new graphics cards take up two slots these days)(grrrr)
• Four gigabit ethernet ports
• 8 x FireWire 400/800
• Two 4/8GB Fibre Channel Slots (optional)(legacy xRAID)
• Two InfiniBand ports (very optional)
Design brief: Jam that lot into a Demi machine with fans, power, etc., Mr. Ive, and make it so futuristic that I want to bow down and worship it. Earn yer money! 😃
Yeah, it was another PowerMac G4 Cube. Style over substance.
Apple should release 2 new Mac Pro models (tower and mini-tower) and make them lightweight aluminum and plastic. The tower model should have with an optical drive bay, dedicated graphics card and additional PCIe slots, while the mini-tower has just a dedicated graphics card. Throw on some USB 3 and USB-C ports, Bluetooth, Wi-fi. Tower starts at $2000, mini-tower starts at $1400-1500 and call it a day.
“Apple should release 2 new Mac Pro models (tower and mini-tower)”
Funny how life is cyclical:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_quadra/specs/mac_quadra_900.html
My Quadra 900 was probably the most productive computer I ever owned.
So was my Quadra 700.
We are with you APPLE! We know you can do it! Amaze us!
Updated G4-sized box with drop down side allowing us to get at the guts. Then sell us a raft of hard drives, specialty cards and nano-blades each of which contains a series of Ax chips that are fast, cool and energy efficient we can slide in by the handful allowing us to create out own mind-blowing, super computer.
That’s all we want. 🙂
Your dear friend, JWW
The pro market is DEFINITELY with Apple!! And yes, they can most definitely amaze us. I happy to see readers here mostly agree that Apple needs to just move forward and certainly not give up on the pro markets that were its life blood during its darkest moments.
I’ve got $4k burning in my pocket waiting for a new Mac Pro (or a 4 core, i7 mini), Apple… and that burn has been there for at least the last year or so. I like my monitors… don’t want an iMac. I can’t imagine they’d abandon the very groups that helped keep them relevant during the dark times, but Mr. Jobs isn’t around to remind people of that. ugh.
There is a place for a professional-grade modular chassis Mac. And the trash can was not it.
How can Apple design so many brilliant, beautiful *and* functional objects, and then throw all of that out the window to build this monolithic wank-job lump of metal?
It is uninteresting as an object. It is less so as a product.
You know what is interesting? An object that does exactly it’s job, and surprises us with the pleasure of using it.
They built an objet d’art to sit on a shelf, untouched. They forgot that a professional has a hands-on relationship with the tools of their trade. Even when it’s a desktop computer.
On this one Apple was designing form the wrong brief.
There is no real reason Apple could not license Mac OS X but restrict it to certain markets.
I have no doubt Sony, Dell, HP, Lenovo or others would jump at the opportunity to sell Mac towers to enterprise and pro markets. I really don’t give a damn about Jony Ive’s fashion on a workstation.
A modern version of the cheese grater would be fine with me.
You read my mind exactly. I want a serious expandable upgradeable pro workstation but want to run the macOS on it (but not a Hackintosh).
What you are describing, is in essence a Hackintosh.
I am glad I went ahead with my Skylake TB3 Hackintosh build, it out performs the Mac Pro Trash can (with the same number of cores) has more ram, more storage, faster network, TB3, USB 3.1 (c ports too), more powerful GPU.. and was much cheaper then the base model Mac Pro Trash can.. and its liquid cooled, so its just as silent. Running 10.11.5 and Protools on it no problems.
I know. I’d just prefer it be officially Apple. Can you list the exact components, case, etc. you used? Or vendor who assembled it for you?
it would be illegal for a vendor to build and sell. tonymacx86.com has parts lists.. pick and choose.
For high-end hardware (and graphics…) Apple is pretty much forcing users to Hackintosh…
Good comments!
There are plenty of people out there with perfectly useful displays (many made by Apple, even) who want more than a mini, but don’t want to buy an iMac. Many of them aren’t even pro users, but they don’t want an iMac (with its all-in-one form and non-upgradeability, it is neither flexible nor repair or eco-friendly). I’ve only had pro machines (the G5 and Mac Pro towers) but never made a penny off of using them. And I don’t want an iMac, because I already have a display.
My current machine is a 2010 Mac Pro, all bays full, with PCI cards. That’s what I want to replace someday, and Apple isn’t offering options. It doesn’t have to be the exact shape, but needs similar features with new components.
And just like the iPhone SE, I think they’d sell surprisingly well, in spite of having an older form.
Odd, I see the MacPro on the Compare page at the bottom: http://www.apple.com/mac/compare/
You’re arriving at a conclusion based on an image. They don’t have gold laptops in the image either, that doesn’t mean they’re going to discontinue the gold color.
Proabaly they left out the cylinder to make a prettier picture, and to emphasise thinness.
It says clearly in the first few sentences the Mac Pro is shipping. Still. Nobody is saying the Mac Pro isn’t available. We just know that, given what is a logical analysis of where we stand today, the current machine, if it was going to get updated at any point, should have been now or before. This machine is done.
That’s what I believe, and because I bought one of them in 2013 and haven’t seen any updates, I suppose I own a future museum piece. I don’t deny the deficiencies cited by others. Their wants and needs were not met. Mine were, as were the needs of an estimated 750,000 others, but that’s few enough that Apple will recalibrate their sustainability equations and send their designers back to the drawing board. That robotic factory in the U.S. could be reprogrammed to stamp out cheese graters, and Apple has to be mulling that over. The one thing I can’t imagine Apple doing is tossing a grenade into the assembled group of Pro users, fragging the lot of them. I’d be standing safely in the distance with my fellow researchers but, you know, we’d still be appalled. And we’d start eyeing Linux or Windows solutions ourselves.
I’m in art and music. Please don’t make me have a whole lot of peers working in Windows!
Apple vs Pro
http://joecodes.com/apple-vs-pro/
That’s it. Two choices only!!! I love these idiotic analysts. There is at the very least a third option and that’s to simply update the current form factor. Maybe put in a USB-C port. That’s not what I want to see, mind you, but it is another option. There are even a few more I can think of. Where do they find these myopic people?
For a large segment of the scientific computing community, what Apple is doing is just fine. Typically, you get a tricked out iMac and then a compute machine – something from Dell that runs UNIX, and with as many Xeon’s as you can afford. The latter can run about 20K, but it’s a dedicated box that also functions as an excellent space heater.
I have a hackintosh (runs El Capitan, Windows 10, and Linux) that runs an i7-4790k and is ALMOST as fast as a 6 core Mac Pro (2013). Granted it only has a GTX960 in it, but if I wanted to, I could add a “pro” gpu. Point is, for a lot less money, I have an “almost pro” machine. If apple came out with a pro machine that more closely matched my needs, I’d get it. However, until then, I’ll stick with my upgradable hardware.
If true, this just goes to show that this will be the final nail in the coffin for enterprise machines.
Maybe why Sir Ive has become quit invisible these last months… Design doesn’t make all.
On the contrary, he is getting more visible. He is getting fat!
so let me understand.. you don’t want to pay $8000 for a machine that requires you to hook it up with a lot of cables to make it even START to function as it should? ah. ok
Would have bought a four-core i7 two years ago. Instead, I bought a used 8-core MacPro. Upgraded the graphics card, added a SSD and USB 3.0 and I’m good to go for less than the cost of a current high-end Mini.
Please Apple, make something a desk-top dinosaur wants to buy.
Get over it. No New Mac Pro’s. Period. And I HAVE one! Apple has signaled it is no longer interested in the content creation market, and have focused all of their resources on the consumers. If you can’t shoot it, record it, and edit it on an iPhone, Apple CLEARLY isn’t interested. This shouldn’t be big news to anyone. What Apple DOES think is that the iMac and MacBookPro’s are now powerful enough to do all the content creation that is needed for consumption on iPhones and iPad…. and to some degree, they aren’t too far off the mark.
But that is the point, that thinking is flawed. No, content creators can’t make due with iPhones, iPads and consumer-oriented, thin-enclosure Macs. As an architect myself, writing about tech in my industry for nearly 2 decades, I can tell you Apple is asking professionals to make do with performance limitations. And they are also telling them to go get a PC when key items like VR-headsets can’t run on Macs. Yet, VR/AR will transform the AECO (architecture, engineering, construction, operations) industry.
It was a poor design when it came out. It was another cube, over styled but not solving the engineering issues that make for a great product. Why doesn’t some of apples design team lunch in emeryville with some animators at Pixar? I’m sure they will get an ear full, but will also come away with what pro media creTors and authors need. Before iPod iPad iPhone, heck even before digital hub, pro markets kept Apple going. They will always need better tools, they will always push state of the art. Fashionable design can still be achieved, but function and future expansion should be met first. It can be done. It should be done.
MSI has a PC in the same form factor now. Slightly less cost with way way way way more power..
Its kind of ugly looking, but performance per dollar ratio is super high when compared to the mac tube..
https://us.msi.com/product/vortex/Vortex-G65-GTX-980-SLI.html#hero-overview
I suggest folks not get their hopes up. Remember the Xserve? I recommended that unit and the associated RAID storage array for one federal office, and it worked rather well for us. Apple ultimately dropped the whole line, suggesting no interest in targeting the back office market. It could well be intending to drop the pro market altogether, suggesting the iMac is “good enough”. The Pro, we should note, is the only Apple product made in the US.
Raymond I too implemented Xserve. It was a great solution. Too bad Apple doesn’t get enterprise.
Intel has been releasing some new killer processors (e.g. 24-core Xeon E7-8890 v4 and 10-core i7-6950X). I’d gladly pony up $6K today for a *real* Mac Pro (i.e. tower case with all the drive bays/slots/ports) with that Xeon.
Tim Cook is perfecting the art of missing windows of opportunity.
As a former professional graphic designer and part-time audio/video editor, I hate to say the following, but you pro users need to hear it.
We’re too small a market to cater to anymore.
That’s NOT to say that Apple will never make anything more than caters to pros, but it has been extremely obvious that the Mac Pro didn’t sell well, and that Apple has focused more on pro software, and that the pro-user market not served by the 27-inch 5K iMac is now a fairly tiny market that’s never going to be profitable enough for Apple to make a top priority.
I think with Thunderbolt 3/USB-C now finally fully out, we may get one more Mac Pro (same design as current), or some other pro-aimed hardware, but that’s probably about it. Apple leaving the server market was the smartest thing it ever did in Enterprise — look at where it is now in that sector! — and it gave us the 5K iMac, which is a fabulous machine. The Mac Pro may not be dead, but its coughing up blood, to quote a line from Monty Python.
“the pro-user market not served by the 27-inch 5K iMac is now a fairly tiny market” is probably the key issue. Apple packs in a lot of performance and features at a very appealing price point for most people. Still curious why they wouldn’t at least bump the Mac Pro ports, cpu, and graphics over time.
By the same logic, then Bugatti, McLaren, Lamborghini, Ferrari, etc should stop making supercars because the market is too small.
We hear over and over again here at MDN that market share doesn’t matter, only profitability. Well, every time anyone speaks of professionals, the internet lights up with people asking when Apple is going to get off its ass and deliver the hardware that people want. Clearly there is a market, and these people have money. What is missing is Apple leadership. Cook and company think that the future is thin client computing. He is dead wrong, and if he continues thumbing his nose at creative professionals, then they will abandon Apple altogether.
There will be no reason to get an Apple TV or other consumer gadget when the real work BY NECESSITY needs to be done on a Wintel box. So no iCloud, and definitely no need for Apple TV or Apple Music. All the competing media services are platform agnostic, so why bother dealing with Apple’s limitations?
As professional users go, eventually so does the rest of Apple’s products. Cook doesn’t understand this. He thinks iCloud is the center of the world, and all things Apple must be connected to it at all times.
“…We hear over and over again here at MDN that market share doesn’t matter, only profitability…” And to some extent they are right… however, Apple has focused their resources on content consumers, and indeed, do their best to provide said content. But how that content is CREATED ? Apple is clearly loosing interest very, very, VERY fast.