Daniel Eran Dilger for AppleInsider:
After years of frustratedly waiting in the dark and suffering through some painful periods of construction work, the new 2019 Mac Pro appears to finally deliver above and beyond what even the most optimistic had hoped for…
Everything the modern Apple does is backed up by massive, overwhelming data, and is part of a long term strategy. That doesn’t mean everything it does is perfect, accurate, unassailable, or even popular among all of its customers. But it does mean that Apple doesn’t decide on what to do next by pulling ideas out of a hat or asking members of a focus group. Instead, we know that Apple works in the opposite direction, developing work on lots of ideas, most of which are rejected with a No…
Apple isn’t always successful in implementing a given strategy. Sometimes no matter how much you try, there just isn’t an audience. Back in 2002 Jobs’ Apple put significant effort into building Xserve, a rack-mounted server that simply never found a niche capable of sustaining it as a product. After it was laid to rest in 2006, Apple subsequently trended away from making any Mac server hardware specifically designed for rack mounting… A lot has changed since 2006, however, and now in 2019, the new Mac Pro is returning in a custom bespoke version designed to slide into a server rack… Pretty clearly, the decision to return to server closets wasn’t a whim floated by Cook or sparked by a customer email. It was part of a careful examination of a shifting market and the ongoing development of technologies within Apple.
MacDailyNews Take: We recommend reading the full article as it explains why Apple does what Apple does in compelling fashion.
Here’s hoping the all-new Mac Pro ships well before 11:59pm Pacific on December 31st, 2019!
“After years of frustratedly waiting in the dark and suffering through some painful periods of construction work…”
And we’re still waiting as we enter the fourth quarter end of 2019. 6-7 long years waiting for the machine we should’ve gotten in 2013.
While I liked the Xserve, it was designed to compete with standard data servers and there weren’t enough server-based applications to support it in the general realm. Since then, so many general applications have move to cloud-based solutions.
Most rack mount servers are geared towards the high powered needs of content creators. It’s a different market than the usual blade server or 1U server buyer.
My comment is not relevant at all, but please allow me this chance to say, Happy Columbus Day, boys. And, might as well call old panda faced Xi a kommie pinko panda faced jerk, on behalf of all Chinese who’d be severely persecuted if they even thought wrong. Oh, glad Apple is making a new Mac Pro. Now, just make make MacBook Pro we can easily change RAM and SSD on. Gracious, mi amigos.
Thank you orenokoto,
Spot-on commentary and sorely needed in today’s environment (too many people with almost no history regarding the 100 million plus dead people as a result of Marx’s “socialism” and Communism). Tip of the hat to you.
I use a MacBook Air (not even latest version). So the 2013 Mac Pro cylinder would deliver above and beyond MY (current) wildest dreams. Hehe… 🤪 In fact, I may even buy one at bargain price, the 6-core version. Practical and nostalgic. My last (and only) “pro” Mac was final G5 model, AFTER switch to Intel announced 😏
It is beyond our wildest dreams. It is also beyond our wildest pocketbooks, not all pros work for kajillionaire benefactors. Have fin with your work computers, privileged ones. I hate to say it, truly (and I honestly never would) but you could build a just as good PC for a heckuva lot cheaper.
Thousand-dollar monitor stand a little too much?
Someone will make a $100 stand substitute and leave Apple holding theirs between their knees.
“Back in 2002 Jobs’ Apple put significant effort into building Xserve, a rack-mounted server that simply never found a niche capable of sustaining it as a product.”
Simply put, that’s 100% wrong. I sat in on more than one large, public conference where Oracle was loudly pronouncing to the attendees that the Xserves were THE most cost effective hardware on which to do Oracle data bases. Even a cluster of Xserves was proclaimed more cost effective than other solutions. Other products that had been ported to the Xserves privately told customers (including me) that the Xserves were the way to go. If Apple had kept the Xserve updated with the latest capabilities and kept it cost effective, the Xserve would have caught on and been as big a product as any other non consumer Mac product.
The reality is that Apple abandoned the Xserve because the bean counters at Apple figured that if it did not sell like gang busters on day one that IR&D for it must stop: “If the sales are not blowing our sox off why update it at all?” The Xserve on day one of shipping had a rather impressive set of capabilities. Not leading in all categories but a very good combination none the less. But, it did not age well. Apple did not keep it at the leading edge. By the time Apple stopped shipping it the Xserve could not even be thought of as an also ran piece of hardware. (The same can be said for related implementations like Xsan. If Apple had implemented the Zeta File System with Xserve & Xsan back then — which they could have done but just chose not to do so — the Xserve and related items could still be shipping today.)
Another reality is that companies want the assurance of knowing the long term roadmap — AT LEAST 3 years, preferably 5 years, and for some rare items 7 years or more. Apple, internally has no idea what it is going to ship 3 years from now. Sure they know they’ll be shipping Macs IN SOME FORM, but WHAT form? Apple has no idea. Sure Apple knows it will be shipping iPhones and iPads, but even Apple has no idea today what they will look like and likely has no idea how they will operate.
I’m a bit dismayed that MDN has any support for the (hopefully) upcoming Mac Pro. The ONLY reason Apple is doing a Mac Pro is because of the negative publicity of abandoning the Mac Pro and the very real, almost assured likelihood of people switching to Windows/Linux for their professional work and taking all their personal stuff (as well as family members) to Windows/Linux too.
Oh, MDN, at WWDC Apple said that the new Mac Pro would ship fall of this year. Fall ends 22 December 2019 when the Winter Solstice happens. Why are you giving Apple an extra 9 days? (Actually, I expect Apple to ship a few hundred of the simplest configuration on 22 December 2019 with the ramp up pretty much following what happened with the 2013 Trashcan Mac, i.e., not hitting full production of all variations until March or April 2020.)
Well said!
Apple has blown its advantages in many computing markets. Servers, education, engineering, … Too bad, because 15 years ago they could have cemented their leads in a lot of profitable areas, including the servers Apple itself uses. You can’t say a product is unprofitable if Apple is forced to buy from the highly profitable competition in order to run its iCloud! Does Apple even make a server-grade OS worthy of the name any more?
I think the huge focus on services, wrist jewelry, and fashion boutiques for the last decade was a major distraction that a competent executive team could have managed without letting the Mac rot. If Apple is using “big data” to predict what hardware they need to develop next, then their data interpretation sucks. Everyone here can identify many product opportunities that Apple missed or whiffed and left uncorrected for YEARS. If the money is sitting in the bank, continuous improvement can turn a weak piece of hardware into a winner. Apple did that for the Watch, pivoting from “time saving” to “health gadget”. Why was Apple too dumb to stick with xServe and OSX Server, etc?
Apple was stupid to axe the xServe on the verge of the cloud services boom. They didn’t see it coming??? A company with Apple’s resources should be able to do several things at once. It should have comprehensive product ranges at competitive prices. By leaving huge holes in hardware product lineups and leaving stale designs to sit on shelves for many years, like the unloved trashcan Mac Pro, Apple has already lost a lot of goodwill. Apple ran away from people who loved the portable workstation 17″ MacBook Pro and instead made 3+ different versions of 12-13″ laptops, not one of them affordable to students . WHY????
Let’s just hope the Mac is given the proper resources to grow and return to becoming a vibrant personal computer platform. Let’s hope additional Mac models come along and aren’t priced through the roof to subsidize further unwanted iOSification. The whole point of a personal computer is to be able to do stuff without an online mothership snooping everything you do. The Mac is the last platform Apple offers that empowers the user to have control. If they screw it up, then Linux and Windows will be the only refuges.
“Let’s just hope the Mac is given the proper resources to grow and return to becoming a vibrant personal computer platform.”
Ha ha, how’s that hope turning out for ya? The question really is whether or not the Mac will die before the folks that still care about it do.
Wrong Again, considering I create content for the biggest brands in the world; I do all of that on multiple Macs. Everything I do from audio/video/graphic, etc.. all done on MACS only. So yes, it’s working out just fine for me, and for all of my 15 corporations and employees I work with.. all on MACS only.. and we are doing just fine. We look forward to a NEW MacPro so we can do our work faster. As long as the world needs content, Macs will prevail.. and with this new MacPro, being modular, it will buy time for Tim Cook to retire (or be replaced – one could only hope) and get a leader in there than can handle more than one thing at a time.
Mike, I agree with your entire post. There is no excuse for the inability to work on numerous things at once and have progress with all of them. The MacPro better get released sooner than later. At this point, I am unsure why there is even a delay.. all the cards are on the table… release them already.. I’ll be buying 2 of them and 2 displays right away.
The actual title of the article is:
“Editorial: No, the new 2019 Mac Pro isn’t a fairy tale come true”
Dilger’s article can be boiled down to one observation: Apple is less interested in serving customers’ creative desires as Jobs spent his career selling; today Apple uses big data to maximize profit. This is different than the human-led product development philosophy where products are invented to solve problems or enable greater user capability and performance. The iPod put 1000 songs in people’s pockets whether or not they were tethered to broadband. Times have changed and Time thinks being Big Brother is now the place to be. Big data showed someone at Apple that taking on Spotify head to head would be a money maker, so well over $3 billion later, Apple let iTunes go stale and instead pushes its music rental service.
Where the article gets screwy is that no data is used to offer why Apple makes certain niche products if profits are the overriding concern. Dilger reverses his theory to claim that the new Mac Pro isn’t an example of Apple on the verge of rolling out a wave of modern Mac hardware that will be extremely profitable. Dilger thinks the Mac Pro is, like the Homepod, a narrow use niche product that will stand alone as a design statement and will sell only to a small audience. So what is the point of the article? Is Dilger thinking that Cook doesn’t want to make money with an array of Macs, and the latest Mac Pro tower is an anomaly, a going away present to Jony Ive? Clearly Apple is going to soak the rich with extremely high prices on the first 2020 Mac Pros, but why wouldn’t Apple also take the money from prosumers as well?
Time will tell if Dilger is correct, but like most pundits, he thinks he knows more than he actually does. Apple is certainly doing a lot less than pundits and fans would desire on the hardware front so that Apple instead can migrate to being a service company. That is true. But why would Apple waste their time building a Mac Pro that cannot be sold to a wider audience? That makes no sense. The only way the Mac remains a viable platform is if Apple sells enough of them to maintain a healthy 3rd party software catalog. That has been a struggle given Apple’s penchant for high pricing. It would be more logical to see Apple commit to the Mac platform and over time add hardware options at lower price points so the entire Mac lineup makes more money and attracts more premium 3rd party developers. Let’s hope the new Mac Pro is just the first of a wave of renewal, with more desktop options in the future and a lot less sealed laptops, laptops-on-a-stand, and crappy keyboards.
Hurrah! For once Mike and I are in agreement. Very cogent commentary on your part. And Shadowself too, I appreciate your input—a lot.
IMO it is still vaporware. Until we get a shipping date it doesn’t exist.
I’m really looking forward to this Mac Pro, I can’t wait to laugh so hard at the pricing Apple thinks it can charge for last years hardware.
Intel’s price for the 28 core Xeon is nearly $7500. This Xeon will be slower than AMD’s 3rd gen 24 core Threadripper and completely obliterated by the 32 core Threadripper.
The GPUs Apple chose are just PCIe 3.0 7nm VEGA and are EOL, AMD has moved on to PCIe 4.0 RDNA2.0 and will be bringing GPUs with ray tracing to market soon.
I haven’t met a single 3d artist who is interested in the Mac Pro, the pricing for the base unit is insane and any self respecting teenager would laugh at you if you bought an 8 core with 3 year old GPU and 256 GB SSD for $6K, they’d think your brain had taken a dump.
Factor in the dated GPUs, the expensive Xeon upgrades and this Mac Pro will be lucky if it sells 10. Only someone who has no appreciation of what the competition is offering can reasonably laud this new Mac Pro as a great game changing computer, it isn’t.
Can use an NVIDIA card in the new Mac Pro?