Rumours are circulating that Apple is pondering killing off the Mac Pro. Sales of the powerhouse are flagging, and a hardware delay has put its future in jeopardy. Has the Mac Pro’s time finally come?
Mac Pros are mighty machines beloved by many, but a recent delay in the delivery of the Pro’s powerful new Xeon Sandy Bridge processors is reportedly causing some higher-ups at Apple to reconsider the Pro’s future. Sales of the Mac Pro have suffered, because no matter how great the machines are the alternatives are so good that it’s getting harder and harder for even serious professionals to justify the Mac Pro’s expense. What’s more, as Cult of Mac points out, Apple dealt the beasts another blow by introducing the new Thunderbolt I/O standard, which replicates the advantages of having expandable PCI slots. It’s been a great run old friend, but maybe it’s time to say goodbye. [Cult of Mac via AppleInsider]
Sicarius123
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 9:44 AMI really don’t see Apple killing off the machine that keeps the dedicated mac geeks on board?
All they’ll be left with are the hipsters.
dave
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 9:54 AMthis really depends on the market share between geeks and hipsters… the greater one will always come out on top.
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 12:01 PMWhat about the hybrid Geeksters?
Jakobi
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 12:09 PMThey’re called ‘web designers’.
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 5:57 PMDamn.
That’s part of my job. :(
Thom
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 10:06 AMNot going to happen. They’d lose their graphic designer early adopters, the brands cool would plummet, and hipsters and general public would follow them to whatever platform became the “Arts” standard. Apple know this. Investors know this.
Not going to happen.
JonBOY
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 10:22 AMWhen you look at the insane prices Apple charge for the Mac Pro it’s no bloody wonder sales are flagging!!!
You can assemble a windows machine with the same hardware specifications for a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, you still have to buy an over-priced cinema display to marry your new over-priced Mac Pro up to.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Macs and run a MacBook Pro and a 2011 Mac Mini, but the Mac Pro line up has always been disjointed from the rest of the Mac line up. I expect to pay a little more for a Mac, and am happy to, but the Mac Pro pricing falls outside of what’s practical.
Virus__
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 11:10 AMYou might be able to “match” the specs from off the shelf parts but you’re not getting the same identical higher grade parts being used.
Stefan
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 11:40 AMLOL!
The places where people buy PC components are the third party producers for the large computer companies. Also when you buy, say a motherboard, there is a strong emphasis on features and quality, e.g. Japanese capacitors. You don’t get that sort of information from a pre-built system.
Thefatyak
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 11:58 AMI have no idea where you got the ‘higher grade parts’ from. A 2600k sandy bridge keeps up with 2x those older Xeons that are in the pro for more then half the price. It’s like your brain washed to thinking when things look clean and sparkly with a huge price tag, ‘thats quality’. IMO i’d much prefer to spec a computer myself, if you do enjoy mac’s OS, install it.
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 2:41 PMNo, you CAN assemble a machine with far higher grade parts off the shelf… But you get what you pay for; if you want really good quality components they’ll still be expensive.
Angus McKinnon
Friday, May 18, 2012 at 11:40 PMAlmost all Mac parts are off-the-shelf now. You’re literally just paying for the shiny metal case.
Kroo
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 1:09 PMYes you can assemble a windows machine, but it’ll still have windows on it, whats the point in that.
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 2:44 PMThat’s moronic. What does it matter? You want a high-spec machine, not to moon over an OS favour like a fool.
Besides, if you’re clever you can have any OS on it, it just depends what software and hardware you want to run.
Dan Miller
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 10:24 AMI think they should just move the Mac Pro to cater for business costumers only. There still is a market for the Mac Pro but not in the consumer way.
Nads
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 10:24 AMNOOOOO!
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 2:42 PMBingo!
ausstorageguy
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 10:38 AMThat will be a crying shame if Apple kissed the Mac Pro goodbye.
What most people misunderstand about workstation class computers is that they offer the power and expandability outside of normal laptops and desktops.
Thunderbolt whilst ok, is not a replacement for PCIe slots when it comes to running HBA’s (Host bus adapters for Fibre Channel etc), RAID Controller cards, hardware render assist cards (matrox or black magic etc) and other interfaces which would easily drown thunderbolt.
Additionally, there is no replacement in the mac ecosphere for XEON and ECC ram (both of which are important for when your job counts)
Macbook pro’s and iMacs don’t cut it for when you need serious streams of data, such as editing multiple streams of HD video or a big render job. (yes, I know you can do it, it’s more a question of how long it takes with only one HDD, 4 CPU cores, 8GB ram (no USB, FW or TB is not a replacement for SATA or SAS direct connented or RAID drives, not for me anyway))
Apple “Pro/Power” workstations used to be known as THE system to use, now Apple seems to be in nothing more than the consumer goods market.
It’s a shame really, much like killing off FCP and turning it into imovie enthusiest edition.
Whilst it’s only a rumour, it’s clear that apples focus is no longer on the professional end of the market or is quickly going out of focus and being redirected to the idea of “good enough”
This is just another reason to convert over to the alternatives, if only to send a message.
Virus__
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 11:13 AMLike when Apple killed off the Xserve, sure they weren’t a market flooder, but they were great for what they were & they rid the market of them.
Stefan
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 11:42 AMThey will just update it when Ivy Bridge Xeon processors.
MotorMouth
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 12:16 PMGod, I hate my MacPro. It is a piece of garbage. It crashes, it’s slooooow and even running Win7 via Bootcamp is an awful experience. I am currently negotiating to swap it for a proper HP workstation with someone else in the office who needs a Mac for compatibility reasons. That said, I think Apple would annoy a lot of high profile customers, e.g. Rising Sun Pictures, so it would be a pretty bold move, I reckon. Still, they have not hesitated to do it in the past, e.g. killing Shake to focus on Aperature (pun intended), so you never know.
markd
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 9:15 PMlol god knows what you’ve done to the poor thing, I put mine through hell and it soldiers on – I think the few times its crashed in the last 2 years are the only times its ever been restarted. I had an XPS before it but it just looked and felt so hideous that I swapped to a slower MacBook :P
MotorMouth
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 12:00 PMI’ve done nothing, apart from give away the Magic Mouse for something I can use all day without getting hand cramps. It was brand new in March and has never been anywhere near as good as PC workstations I’ve used in the past. In fact, my 3 year old Dell M4400 laptop does many things better, thanks to it’s better graphics (nVidia QuadroFX trumps everything) and dual SSDs.
The thing is, you’re probably comparing yours to a consumer desktop PC, I am used to dedicated workstations from IBM and HP, which absolutely krap all over it and cost less.
I remember the first time I got to work on a Mac, in 1999. I was so excited because everyone says how much better they are for graphic artists than PCs but it only took me an hour to realise how much worse things lie Photoshop performed. I couldn’t wait to get back to my Pentium-powered machine. Sure OS X was an improvement but I remember teaching a class at AFTRS where the 12 month old Macs couldn’t even draw the software UI properly for the application I was teaching (Discreet/Autodesk Combustion). They ran out of memory and couldn’t draw half the widgets on dialog boxes. It was OK for me, I knew where to click, but the students were completely bamboozled.
Thomas Power
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 3:34 PMyou talk the most shit out of anybody i have ever seen on Gizmodo. my 2008 iMac run’s photoshop better then my school’s PC computers and my school is leading in the IT field for my town. they even ended up buying a few Mac Pro’s for the film students because they are that much better, even the IT Coordinator agreed that the Mac’s were better then anything he has ever used. make’s you wonder. hmm.
MotorMouth
Friday, November 4, 2011 at 2:34 PMSchool PCs? Don’t make me laugh. Next you’ll be comparing your Mac to a PC at an internet cafe. I am talking about a machine they spent $20,000 on (including Adobe CS5 and Sapphire plugins). For that kind of money you should expect a helluva lot more than what I have to put up with here. For that kind of money I could have got an HP workstation with the same CPUs, QuadroFX graphics and an on-board RAID, instead of having to put up with gaming graphics (Radeon) and a single HDD. It is the worst computer I have had to work on in 5 years and it’s only real strength is as a render machine (lots of raw CPU power).
joe
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 12:20 PMmaybe if they didn’t overprice the thing so bad….
amy
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 1:47 PMApple, it’s time.
It’s time to bring out the Mac Pro Mini.
John
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 7:22 PMAnyone with half a brain can see where Apple is headed. Bye bye pro users. Hello consumer gadgets :)
Darren P
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 9:02 PMI have just retired my 2006 (half a decade old) Mac Pro 2.66 2x dual core and replaced it with a 2011 iMac 3.4 with OWC SSD (500mb/sec) with a Pegasus R6 (600mb/sec).
Yes it is faster, but what a pain in the ass! I have to keep the 1TB internal because you cannot upgrade it without fan issues. You have to keep the R6 running all the time if you run BT or a iTunes database off it. The R6 is noisy, and while pretty stable it is flakier than my raid 0 running in my old Mac Pro.
Its simple…….. Upgrade the MacPro to SATA3 bus give it a few thunderbolt port. Give it 8 internal SATA ports (4x 3.5”, 4x 2.5”) so you can run a 4HDD raid 0 (up to 12TB 500mb/sec) 3 SSD scratch disk in raid 0 (1500mb/sec) and a boot SSD (500mb/sec)
ausstorageguy
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 3:44 PM@Darren P:
“Give it 8 internal SATA ports (4x 3.5”, 4x 2.5”) so you can run a 4HDD raid 0 (up to 12TB 500mb/sec) 3 SSD scratch disk in raid 0 (1500mb/sec) and a boot SSD (500mb/sec)”
Not sure about that RAID 0 bit (scratch yes), but I completely agree.
Finally someone who understands that having 1 x 2TB drive does not equate to the performance of 4 x 500GB drives.
Having only 4 drives internally is a real pisser, having to add drives externally makes it no better!
Why not just make it ~8 x 2.5″+
So yes, I agree, add more damn drive slots.
Kendal
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 11:32 PMMacPro has been plagued with 3rd party component delay issues since it was a G3 PowerMac. The top end of computing is becoming subject to the commercial down side of Moore’s law. The top end of computing becomes less and less relevant to the market, as it’s capabilities far exceed those required by the user base. This, coupled with the ‘trickle down’ strategy technology companies put in place (Apple has been doing this for over a decade) where the top end ‘Pro’ technology is migrated down into the consumer space, means that eventually, unless you need a super-duper computer, a super computer will do. Just sayin’.