This is a technology journalism piece reporting on Apple's announcement of future Mac Pro redesign plans and strategic decision-making. The article documents corporate transparency and responsiveness to professional users (musicians, video editors, developers, designers) who depend on specialized tools for their work. While the content tangentially engages with themes of professional work needs and corporate accountability, it does not explicitly address human rights frameworks or advocacy.
For me -- and, I suspect, many others -- this is too little too late.
Just a few months ago, I spent somewhere around $4500 (all-in) putting together a new workstation. It runs Linux instead of OS X and this has led to me using my (4-year-old) ThinkPad more than my (18-month-old) MacBook Pro (when I'm "on the go"). I actually plan on selling the MBP; I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
I'm sure this is great news -- and long-awaited -- to many people... but some of us got tired of waiting.
Gave up on the mac pro years ago. I replaced my unkillable 2008 Mac pro with a lovely Fractal Design R5 case, a stonking 5930k overclocked at 4.5Gz on a 'posh' ASUS Mobo with 64GB of DDR.
It's a 'hackintosh', sure enough, but it's fantastic. First time in 30 years I don't own a mac, that's telling. Their fault, too.
>Mac sales were up in 2016, once again outpacing the PC industry as a whole, and the new MacBook Pros are a hit, with sales up “about 20 percent” year over year.
a pro machine that demanded placement on your desk, not under your desk
... and that's how Apple lost the professionals. The desk is a clean space for a huge monitor / keyboard / mouse, and MY work. It's good to make a workstation that looks nice, but it's ten times as good to make one that's flexible and powerful. The only people who want that workstation on the desktop are the designers at Apple, and stroking your own ego isn't on the path to making a great product.
Every great designer knows that form follows function.
That fact that the new Mac Pros will not be out till next year makes it sound like they've only started working on it quite recently, perhaps in response to the furore over their treatment of their professional users.
> For examples of the type of software that the current Mac Pro isn’t well-suited for, Federighi mentioned VR: “Those can be in VR, those can be in certain kinds of high end cinema production tasks where most of the software out there that’s been written to target those doesn’t know how to balance itself well across multiple GPUs, but can scale across a single large GPU.”
Interesting that VR get's a mention there. Federighi chooses his words carefully, and they're aware of the rumours surrounding Apple and VR.
While people purchasing in bulk for enterprise contexts may have a different situation, on the individual level, I am financially bothered by the idea of a pro machine I cannot maintain, or am locked out of.
I hope the situation is not that the market of pro individuals have moved to the point of just throwing the whole machine away on an upgrade.
The Gruber article hints that Apple might have human manual maintainability / upgradability on a priority list, but I wonder what that means.
Great. Now they need to reintroduce a MBP with top of the line specs and without the stupid touchbar.
Snark aside, I have a mid 2010 mac pro at home that is still going strong (due to upgrades, SSD, more RAM.) However, I would like to get a new GPU for the machine, but I'm not about to spend $500 on a better, but ancient GPU that's compatible with a 7 year old machine. I've been wondering what my upgrade path would be. No way in hell I'm buying a trashcan mac without any upgradability. And I'm certainly not going to buy a MBP with the touchbar (I need a real escape key) and under powered specs.
I'm really hoping this is true, otherwise in the next year or two I'm going to be seriously considering building a PC like I used to and deal with Windows 10. The rest of my family uses apple and it makes support for their devices easier being on the same platform, but I need better performance for photo editing and audio production.
I honestly don't care much about the Pro (since even with the speed bump it's still not that much better value for money) or the iMac (which is nonsensical for me given the form factor and my need for multiple displays) but am glad to hear about the mini still being alive, especially because my old Mini has just hit seven years.
Like many others, I put together a decent "tiny" Hackintosh (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/12/17/1840), but ended up converting it to a Linux workstation because it turned out it was more useful to me as a VM host.
So I'm still using my ancient mini as an instant-on desktop (can't quite beat Apple's BT keyboards, really), and am looking forward to upgrading it - I just hope Apple realizes that it serves "semi-pro" uses well enough to gift it with at least as much CPU and RAM as the current MacBook Pro range...
> What struck me about this is that Apple was framing a discussion in which the big news — the whole point, really — was their pre-announcing a “completely rethought” next-generation Mac Pro by emphasizing that most of their pro users use MacBooks and most of the rest use iMacs — and that they have big plans in store for the pro segment of both of those product lines. It’s exactly what I would have expected Apple to say if they were breaking the news that the Mac Pro was going away: We’re dropping the Mac Pro because its time has come and gone — all but a small percentage of our pro users have their needs met by MacBook Pros and high-end iMacs.
It is also exactly what you would think Apple would say if they know this is going to be an extremely expensive device. Much more so than the current Mac Pro.
Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a hardware problem) and then try to debug it. Good luck searching online for a resolution.
I never had success with Linux. My Macbook pro has had its shares of problems (Wifi issues that later resolved with a system update) but it's nowhere my experience trying to install Linux and battling the drivers issue.
Anyone figuring out the Linux/Laptop problem is re-inventing the Macbook Pro/OS X.
Here are things that I'd pay $1,000 on top of the current Macbook Pro model:
- Thiner/Lighter
- Longer Battery Life (5+ hours)
- 32/64GB RAM
For OS X:
- Less cluttering (ie: remove all Apps and let the user decide what to install, like Siri and crap).
- Native Package Manager
That's about it. I'd be buying the new Macbook Pro in a month. But if Apple releases something like the above, I'm more than happy to drop 5-8k usd into it.
Best Apple-related news I have heard in a long time. Of course its outrageous, that they didn't listen to their customers earlier and reacted quicker, but it is great that they finally do, and also, that they are not shy admitting via this interview, that they changed their course.
Based on how long a product takes to bring to market in a large company, it might have well been the public reaction to the MB Pro release last autumn which woke them up. Just todays spec-bump of the Can takes like 6 months of preparation and planning. And it would fit to the true renewal being about 1 year in the future from today.
It might be to late for some, but I am so glad this is happening. Apple can make great hardware, if they are trying, and this sounds that they are trying again, so I am very curious what they can create.
Wow, what a torrent of negativity on this thread, I didn't see a single positive comment reading through the top level.
This is excellent news, I'm chugging along on a 2010 Mac Pro and was very disappointed when the Apple Displays were cancelled last year. They are a staple of the lineup and always look gorgeous compared to what's on the market. I will definitely be buying the new Mac Pro and 2 displays to go with it. There is absolutely no way I will ever use Windows and having to downscale to an iMac or, worse, a MacBook Pro, when my Mac Pro is finally too old was filling me with dread. By the sounds of things, they are working on making it modular and expandable, also very good news as I like to keep my workhorse computer for a long time.
Overall very excited to see what Apple announce next year!
I admit I only skimmed this (my only wish for Apple is for them to release a set of build tools for Linux that allows building ios apps, and (more importantly, really) support the installation and purchase of OS X for running on non-apple hardware, and in VMs -- I don't think either of those will happen) -- however -- I caught this:
> We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do.
That's silly. They could take their previous generation Mac Pro chassis, stuff it with a dual Xeon board, 128gigs of RAM, a pair of SSDs and a pair of Nvidia 1080s - and after some nominal quality testing/driver tweaking sell it at their regular ridiculous mark-up.
Those old cases are so convenient, I've considered buying a used one just for a regular pc workstation build. Easy to get to the internals, nice airflow. Roomy. Looks perfectly fine:
Pleasantly Surprise that Mac Pro is still alive and getting a remake. Not only are they not killing it, they are also Pre-announcing it. Both action seems very Un-Apple.
My guess is that, Mac Pro, no iMac update, and Macbook Pro with touchbar had many pro users worried and start freaking out. And Apple think they needed to do something fast because they dont have anything to shown in the short term. I also wonder why touchbar wasn't questioned in the Interview if they think it was a mistake. TouchID is great, Touch bar is not.
In 5 years time, by 2022 we are very likely to get 7nm from Intel and 5nm from TSMC. There is no reason why, within the same thermal budget, we cant fit a 16 Core CPU, a GPU that is equal or faster then today's Top GPU, 128GB RAM, and PCI-E 4.0 SSD. I.e This iMac will be faster then many of the Mac Pro sold today, and likely to cover majority of the Pro uses.
That is why I am surprised at Apple continue to support the Mac Pro. It is highly likely the numbers of Mac Pro sales will continue to shrink.
I hope Apple look at Rack usage as one of the factor in its design. I see Mac Pro in Severs Rack as one of the potential to greatly increase its sales.
Perhaps they're realising that they're potentially losing a lot of people, and are a way aways from shipping. Much better to announce some vaporware and encourage people to stick around, especially if they plan to deliver. Before now, people had little hope about either Pros or Macbooks.
I think Gruber addresses this pretty well: they already took the silent approach, but it was becoming unsustainable with their pro market, whose needs were not being met. If they just did a small hardware bump, they'd be projecting that they'd given up on the pro and they'd lose a lot of loyalty and goodwill. People can only wait so long so this info helps to keep them interested and bring the term "Apple" back into the vocabulary of any pro considering a future purchase.
It's never too late for me to look at potentially better alternatives. I would never work myself into a situation where switching to an alternative major OS would be extremely hard. But sure, depending on what you work with, that can of course happen -- issues like software unavailable on said target platform. Disregarding that though, I prefer not to close doors by free will.
I wouldn't take that too literally, firstly those are Gruber's words and secondly, there isn't anything stopping you putting the Mac Pro on the floor so long as the cables reach.
They likely didn't have a choice, especially as they released a speed bump today. The Mac Pro had become a bit of a joke but the iMac and MBP range was powerful enough (just enough) that the pro community would grumble more than complain.
After the critical reception of the new MacBook Pro range amongst the Apple community, especially pro users, everyone was questioning Apple's commitment to pro users, and the Mac as a whole.
I'm glad to see Apple doing this, but I can't help thinking this was totally reactive and pre-emptive damage control. If Apple had just released the Mac Pro speed bump, there would be even more of an outcry that Apple has given up on anything more than incremental changes.
The pessimist in me thinks that Apple simply had no idea that there was this sort of demand for pro Macs. Phil and Craig mentioned the iMac numerous times, as though to say "hey pros, there is a great Mac you can use", so they can still claim that they do make great, high-performance pro devices.
My guess is "next year" means "Holidays 2018", and my guess is that Apple has only recently started work on this. Apple hasn't been about modular design or expandability for a long time. With the rise in adoption of VR, there has been even more discussion about upgrading graphics cards (remember Oculus comments about the Mac?), and the age of the CPUs is another criticism. I just can't imagine Apple starting work on this some time ago.
Same I was a huge mac fan, switched during the TiBook era a good 14 years ago used them throughout my professional career (designer, 3D, animation, creative tech) but after waiting and waiting for a pro refresh with Nvidia I bit the bullet and built a PC in December.
I would have been willing to spend several thousand £ on a Mac Pro that met my needs, ended up having my needs met by a PC with a GTX 1080 that cost less than the baseline iMac and within 15 minutes of 3D rendering using CUDA and Octane render I asked myself why I didn't do this years ago and my wallet thanks me.
Now I don't really see the point in going back to Apple, feels like they've only just decided to care about pro users again and this was probably a decision that came out of a meeting where it was 50/50 if the line was killed or rebooted.
Have a Fractal Define Mini C myself, definitely desk worthy even as someone who is very fussy about product design. Has a utilitarian Richard Sapper vibe.
Really wish more PC component companies focus on high quality good looking components without the gamer branding.
I'm not sure Craig meant to say that. Tim Cook has stated he's not crazy about VR but thought there were quite a few applications with AR. Perhaps that's what he really meant?
I'm on #3 hackintosh, and I agree, they're great. I'm using it for audio production primarily. 0 problems, and I have a lot of peripherals. The one place these fall short is graphics card support. Newer 1070's and 1080's simply do not work (unless there's some very recent developments).
Not really, what are people supposed to do? Move their entire ecosystem to Windows?
Just because it sells doesn't mean it's a great product. Balmer's reign is testament to that so I'm getting pretty tired of (non-shareholder) people pointing at spreadsheet numbers to justify Tim Cook doing a good job.
Granting it took Adobe about 10 years to switch from old classics API on mac to cocoa, don't expect CS on Ubuntu before 2050 if they start working on it today...
I found that comment bizarre, someone correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I've seen in my own experience and other people in my field (3D CG) multi-GPUs seem to scale ridiculously well.
Seemed more of a case that no one wants to actually code for OpenCL on AMD...
Companies and industries make purchasing decisions that lock them in for several years, so Apple probably finally got their head out of their ass as they could see people heading in another direction.
Once you've spent five years transitioning to, say, a Windows setup, there's a significant additional cost to going with Apple, and it's not like Apple has felt like a deluxe experience lately.
Especially since the whole virtual escape key thing– being a default layout vim user for 20+ years– I'd love to follow suit, but I need Adobe Creative Suite. The tools available on Linux aren't even ballpark. Getting OS X on a VM has always been fussy and frustrating, and if I wanted to work with Windows I'd just use a Windows laptop. On top of that, the apple magic trackpad is just great. Fussing with extracted bootcamp drivers to get it to work on a virtualized windows so I can run some essential software? No thanks. I need quick access to a comfortable, familiar replacement environment if something goes wrong with my regular computer. I can't afford to futz around with that stuff.
I ran a Hackintosh for about 1.5 years. I just recently went back to Windows 10 after the integrated Linux sub-system came out with the update. Most of the software/tools I use run in both OS X and Windows, so it wasn't a huge deal breaker for me.
One thing I didn't like about the Hackintosh was maintaining it during updates, having to wait for the right NVidia web drivers, and then remembering how to update all the stuff specifically.
What I did like was that I had a computer that I built for $1100 that scored about 16,000 on the Geekbench, without overclocking.
Note: I still use a Mac Book Air 11" because it's the best laptop I've owned. I think the trackpad and sleep/wake functionality that just works is the best ever, and makes it really convenient. Obviously, these two killer features for me matter a lot less on a desktop.
Second Note: I built mine with an aluminum Rosewill Legacy U3-S – Silver/Aluminum Case that was both compact, and really good-looking.
[Edit, updated type of computer cost from $110 -> $1100]
If I could upvote you 100 times I would. I just want an updated 2008 Pro. It doesn't even have to be the absolute fastest CPUs out there. It just needs to be reliable and fast and ideally quiet too.
Too late maybe (at least for your personal upgrade cycle), but I don't see how a complete re-think using a modular design, pro monitors, and up-to-date components can be too little. What more were you hoping for?
If MacOS had: up-to-date OpenGL support, Nvidia made drivers that supported new cards for it, was not locked into Mac hardware - that would be tremendous.
On the other hand, if Windows had a proper shell and cli tools, like cygwin with zsh, but native and not Ubuntu layer inside - that would be tremendous.
If Linux, any desktop variant (Fedora my poison), had Adobe's support for their DCC apps and great battery management for laptops - that would be tremendous.
If Windows and Linux had the above + Preview from MacOS - that would be tremendous.
This. Can we remember that Apple is making a box with fans and a motherboard? It takes them five years because they have to be inspired with some original concept that marries form and function, and then deliver something novel and daring -- not just a new computer, but a new kind of computer. This is not in customers' interest, and they are right to be upset.
Editorial Channel
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Article 19Freedom of Expression
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Article exercises and documents free expression through journalism. Author reports on corporate communications from direct-attendance roundtable discussion, provides extensive direct quotes from Apple executives, and offers independent analysis and interpretation.
FW Ratio: 60%
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The author is a journalist reporting from direct attendance at an Apple roundtable discussion about product strategy with three Apple executives.
The article includes extensive direct quotes from Apple executives discussing future product plans and corporate reasoning.
The author provides independent analysis and interpretive commentary on the disclosed information.
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The article exercises free expression rights through journalism and documents corporate transparency to public audiences.
Public reporting on corporate decision-making and strategy supports informed discourse about major technology companies.
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Article 23Work & Equal Pay
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Article discusses professional users and their work-related needs. Explicitly names worker categories: musicians (music creation), video editors, graphic designers, software developers. Apple executives acknowledge current products do not meet needs of some professional users. Frames company's planned redesign as responsiveness to professional work requirements.
FW Ratio: 60%
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Article explicitly mentions professional work categories: music creation, video editing, graphic design, software development, VR development, and high-end cinema production.
Apple executives directly state that the current Mac Pro was great for some professional users but not others and does not meet all professional needs.
The article frames Apple's commitment to redesign as addressing professional users' specific work-related requirements.
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Discussion of professional tools and workers' needs reflects recognition that work conditions and effectiveness are shaped by available equipment.
Acknowledgment that current products fail to meet some workers' professional requirements implies recognition of work-related needs and constraints.
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Article discusses tools and platforms for cultural and scientific work. Explicitly names creative professionals (musicians, video editors, graphic designers) and technical/scientific professionals (software developers, VR researchers, high-end cinema production specialists). Frames these activities as important professional work deserving robust tool support.
FW Ratio: 60%
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Article mentions tools and support needed for musicians, video editors, graphic designers, software developers, VR developers, and cinema production specialists.
Apple executives discuss how the Mac Pro design limitations affected performance for scientific and creative workloads.
The article frames tool availability and capability as directly relevant to whether creative and scientific professionals can effectively perform their work.
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Discussion of specialized tools for creative and scientific work reflects recognition of these activities' professional and cultural importance.
Attention to whether computing tools adequately support musicians, designers, developers, and researchers indicates engagement with cultural and scientific participation.
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Article 19Freedom of Expression
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Content is publicly accessible without barriers. Blog provides open platform for reporting and commentary.
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