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The Mac Pro Lives

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111–120 of 821 posts

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#111
post #45

This is an incredibly weird thing... Inviting a bunch of bloggers into a room and saying that they're sorry, but they have great stuff down the line? It feels incredibly un-Apple.

Not bloggers. Religious fanatics.

Not sure why this was downvoted as it's completely accurate. Apple invited a well-known, Apple fanboy to an exclusive meeting with high level execs (feeling special yet?) to break this news - pretty much the best case scenario to break disappointing news.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#113
post #65

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…

I don't think that's necessarily Apple's fault. Desktops/towers (much to my chagrin) are largely a thing of a bygone era. No matter where I go, everyone is on a laptop, and that's what allows the employee to be mobile.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#114

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.

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.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#115

> 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. Fe…

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?

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#116

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.

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).

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#117
post #48

What an incredible unprofessional move, this would never have happened under Steve Jobs. Apple has been known for having the patience to wait with introducing things until they got them right. I guess this really is the Scullyfication of Apple. Desparate moves rather than just putting your heads down and come out with something new when you have it.

Didn't downvote. But maybe it's just a matter of them realizing that they have to announce something because they know releasing when it's ready means next year... and last year was already late. The company has changed in a lot of ways since 2011, some in a bad way, some in good. Times are changing too. Get on with it.

They dont have to do anything. They can just come out with things when they are ready. The Pro line is such a specific usecase that they wont be missing that many people and even if they loose some they will come back if what they come with really are as great as they claim.

If they really wanted to put out the words that they are working on something they should hint at it instead.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#118
post #57

>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. Brutal to all the MBP hot takes from this fall. Here's a good running list of them. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-pros-and-the-...

>Brutal to all the MBP hot takes from this fall.

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.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#119
post #27

The world would be better served by Apple getting out of the hardware business and just selling OSX, allowing it to run on any x86 architecture without all of the Hackintosh bull. I don't understand who these people are that are spending a 50% premium on components that are two to three years old. I use a MBP regularly, but only because my work buys them.

Because that's not Apple's business model? They did the licensing thing in the mid-90s. Mac clones were a thing. To license macOS means to support infinite hardware variations, and to rely on OEMs not to suck. It is an impossible technical problem for a company whose whole ethos revolves around integration of h/w and s/w.

To license macOS means to support infinite hardware variations, and to rely on OEMs not to suck.

Kind of.

Apple had to approve any clone designs. It wasn't as willy-nilly as the PC market. At the time Apple allowed cloning, Apple itself had a large number of varying models to support.

Apple's big problem was that the clones were faster and cheaper. For example, the Umax C500 was available up to 240 Mhz while the PowerMac 4400 was only available up to 200 Mhz and the Umax machine was $400 less expensive and that was on the low end.

Power Computing's clones were high end and either matched or outperformed their Apple equivalents for less money. The PowerTower 200e was released the same day as the PowerMac 9500/200 and it was $1300 less expensive.

In the really high end, the Daystar Genesis MP smoked everything in Apple's product lineup.

The cloners were bad for Apple but only because Apple couldn't compete with them. Developing both the hardware and the software was too expensive for them to not be able to make all of the profit on every sale.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#120
post #87

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect The Osborne effect is a term referring to the unintended consequences of a company announcing a future product, unaware of the risks involved or when the timing is misjudged, which ends up having a negative impact on the sales of the current product. This is often the case when a product is announced too long before its actual availability. This has the immediate effect of…

I don't think they care about this. Mac Pro sales aren't large enough to be important to the company's bottom line. It's far more important for them to keep pro customers from abandoning the Mac altogether.
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