Tom Boger, Senior Director of Mac Hardware Product Marketing:
“We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year.”
Matthew Panzarino provides some really interesting information in this piece after speaking to Apple. I especially like the new Pro Workflow Team.
The group is under John Ternus and works closely with the engineering organization. The bays that I’m taken to later to chat about Final Cut Pro, for instance, are a few doors away from the engineers tasked with making it run great on Apple hardware.
“We said in the meeting last year that the pro community isn’t one thing,” says Ternus. “It’s very diverse. There’s many different types of pros and obviously they go really deep into the hardware and software and are pushing everything to its limit. So one thing you have to do is we need to be engaging with the customers to really understand their needs. Because we want to provide complete pro solutions not just deliver big hardware which we’re doing and we did it with iMac Pro. But look at everything holistically.”
Apple is hiring some of the industry’s top professionals to find out where the pain points are in the workflow and fix them. This is an incredibly detailed approach to getting the next Mac Pro out the door.
“We’ve been focusing on visual effects and video editing and 3D animation and music production as well,” says Ternus. “And we’ve brought in some pretty incredible talent, really masters of their craft. And so they’re now sitting and building out workflows internally with real content and really looking for what are the bottlenecks. What are the pain points. How can we improve things. And then we take this information where we find it and we go into our architecture team and our performance architects and really drill down and figure out where is the bottleneck. Is it the OS is it in the drivers is it in the application is it in the silicon and then run it to ground to get it fixed.”
I can’t wait to see this new machine.
I can’t help but think it’d be amusing if by “modular” they meant “literally in modules you snap together”.
It won’t be*.
But it’d be funny.
(* Hold that beer, Apple, and prove me wrong!)
Nah, they’re magnetic. Put them near one another and they reform into their ideal configuration…. 🙂
You mean it won’t be a Terabit per second Wi-Fi mesh?!
2019. Ach.
Shh… don’t tell!
If only this was a problem that had been solved by literally the entire rest of the industry. Hint: Make it bigger than the minimum size possible, and use a fan. Let the users decide if they want 4-year-old tech, or a larger, thermally-viable enclosure with a quiet little fan.
Hell, “Modular” could just mean Thunderbolt 3. I assume the new Mac Pro will be basically a $6000 iMac Pro without the screen, the minimum possible size to allow them to fit a Xeon into it, in an asinine non-rectangular shape with anemic thermal capacity (suffering from thermal throttling). It’ll have a raft of TB3 ports (other ports subject to Jony Ive’s mercy). Things it WON’T have: * Card slots of any kind. User-replaceable RAM, SSD, etc. MARK MY WORDS.
I can’t interpret their actions as anything other than this. Apple actively wants to kill the Mac as a general-purpose computing platform. They’d rather 100% of consumers stop using it so they can focus all their attention on the device (iPhone) that pays the bills. As for how to run Xcode to dev for iOS without the Mac, they will preserve enough of the OS to do that, and either keep releasing garbage, un-compelling hardware, or eventually release “Xcode-OS” for commodity hardware (or partner with some ‘blessed’ vendor to make the hardware). This would be for devs only and wouldn’t be supported for any other use. macOS would be sunsetted.
Hey Apple, looking for the pain points and bottlenecks?
You are the pain point. You are the bottleneck.
Desktop computers have been around for over 35 years. They are a solved problem. You don’t need a Pro Workflow Group, Apple. You’re not making a Final Cut machine. Just make a damn computer with some power headroom and extensibility. The pro users are pro users. They can figure it out if they are actually provided options.
Go to any other PC maker’s website. Go to the desktop section. Find the most powerful one. Do that, but with MacOS. It’s not complicated.
It’s like, after the MacBook Air, every computer by Apple needs to be that level of shock and awe or Apple can’t even be bothered to come to work.
The rest of the industry is doing a bang-up job of selling those. *sarcasm*
I’m not saying I could do it. Obviously there are engineering issues in play. But they’ve been able refresh other products without significant engineering changes.
This is a company with hundreds of billions in cash on hand. Use those resources. How much money are they leaving on the table by ignoring their own products and forcing users to turn to a competitor?
Not to spoil a good rant, but pro workflows are quite different than they were 10 years ago, never mind 35 years ago. There isn’t much incentive for Apple to just put out a workstation tower. That market is already served. Apple’s strength and passion is in innovating.
If only you’d read the post I was replying to, where just swapping the chip would have worked.
Go read the piece.
Because yes, Apple is all about leaving money on the table. That’s how they’re so successful you see…
Or maybe, just maybe, the Mini isn’t that important to them and sales are a fraction of what people seem to think.
Hey Scott… since you’re so sure about this… go show them how to do it.
Go read the piece.
Isn’t that the current Mac Pro?
I’m pretty sure Apple already swallowed their pride, admitted their mistakes, and said they’re re-thinking that approach.
They highlighted “modular” to contrast against the current “modular” approach of the Mac Pro. Meaning, not TB3, but actual modular components.
Dude, even Apple admits that they screw up on occasion. Maybe you can, too.
“There isn’t much incentive for Apple to just put out a workstation tower. That market is already served.”
You don’t think there’s an incentive for Apple to keep creative professionals continuing to use Macs? For developers to continue creating software for that market?
Even Apple has admitted hat their approach to the Mac Pro has been a mess.
Apple doesn’t just make hardware, They are also the primary software provider for more than one pro customer segment. Having a working group devoted to learning exactly how professional customers use your hardware and software so that you can better provide exactly what those people need sounds like a good idea to me.
You could not possibly be more wrong. Right now, Apple makes most of their money from IOS devices, but that could change. Customers are fickle and the computer industry is subject to sudden sea changes. Apple’s grand strategic plan is to always keep more than one arrow in their quiver.
They have repeatedly explained their vision of computing is that each step down in size provides a device that is even more intimate and personal, whereas each step up in size provides a device that is even more powerful and capable. The job of the mac is to do computing tasks that cannot be accomplished on a mobile device. The job of mobile devices is to take routine computing chores and make them easier and more convenient than doing them on a mac.
There have been reports that the Mac group within Apple has suffered from organizational disarray. It could also be that it’s suffered from allowing accountants set the update schedule. But the fundamental problem is that Intel has not been delivering the raw materials (in CPU or in chipset updates) necessary for Apple to have regular compelling updates to their mac hardware.
Managing expectations here before the rumor mills start weaving for WWDC.
What’s to understand?
Pros need scalability, more I/O options, more power, more memory, more of everything, and not cost $20K for the ‘ideal’ model. Oh, and a nice matching Pro monitor would be very happily and enthusiastically appreciated too. Otherwise, just go get a new iMac Pro.
I can’t help but ponder if this year’s Mac OS ‘house cleaning’ update (rather than the annual feature update) might also coincide what the Pro team is planning for next year.
It’s really unforgivable to go 6 years without even a processor bump.
And no news on the Mini, which also hasn’t even received a refresh since 2014.
How hard can it possibly be to just update the chips on an annual basis? We’re not even asking you to put your top talent on it. Just hire some schmoes and put them to it.
It can be pretty hard when heat generation keeps increasing. A Mac mini is essentially a laptop without most of the cooling system.
I didn’t say Apple should abandon creative professionals. I just said putting out a copy of the same workstation tower the other PC makers are doing isn’t likely the best path for them. They’ve already had a pretty good showing with the iMac Pro and seem to be investing in getting a Mac Pro that works for professionals as well. They missed with the current Mac Pro, but that doesn’t mean the solution is to simply copy what everyone else is doing.
Did.
Not hard at all. Bottom line, Apple didn’t want to waste anymore time on the current systems.
If I has to guess what’s going on, I’d say they were in the midst of reinventing the Mac’s architecture from the ground up. MacBooks and iMacs continued to be updated throughout this time because they are the most popular models. The headless Macs along with the external display (and wireless devices) could be set aside.
The first sign of what’s to come is the advent of eGPU support in macOS. This fits nicely into Apple’s modularity goals of what will be the antithesis of all-in-one designs; disparate components linked together to create the perfect workstation and can be expanded as needed; main system module, CPU module, GPU module, storage module, networking module, PCI slot module, etc…
try comprehension then.
Dude, just go away.
Well, they talked in detail about how they’re working with pros to figure out IN DETAIL what various segments of the pro market really need. Your comment of ‘more power’ isn’t wrong but it’s utterly simplistic. So, yeah, read for comprehension next time vs trying to just make a point.
The lack of a Mini refresh is unlikely to be a screwup and more the fact that it’s probably not selling well and doesn’t warrant their attention much. That’s different from the Pro fiasco which was a true screwup.
I thought Caleb’s point was more of everything while not paying $20K for it..
If the current iMac Pro is any indicator, the “2019 Mac Pro” (I’m guessing closer to Christmas release instead of Easter, but awesome if it is available by WWDC) is probably going to start around $8-10K.
We’ll see. It depends what the base configuration is. If it’s just effectively the Pro version of a Mini (a box with CPU/SSD/GPU) then it may well start at the base price of an iMac Pro… but then you add on a screen, other modules you need (TB3 external redundant SSDs? etc).
From the piece, what I got was that they don’t want to just toss everything in a box and assume that one box = the pro that everyone needs, but rather that they want to learn about and serve the various niches in the pro segment. Maybe that’s overkill. Maybe it’s not going to work. But if someone needs raw power right now, the iMac Pro does that very very well.
Keep hope alive.
Here’s a better idea. Why don’t the BOTH of you just ignore each other and stop throwing petty posts up on this site? Thank you.
I like you Shawn, but WTF.
WTF…what?
Naw, the current Mac Pro has upgradeable ram, storage, video, and CPU.
(Apple doesn’t support end-user CPU and GPU upgrades, but they are doable.
The only real-world GPU upgrade in practice is from someone parting out a higher-spec Pro, but the card’s are replaceable.)
Reminds me (re. above comments) about how so many people are just sure they know what “pro users” need.
And it turns out it’s always identical to their maximum use-case or dream machine, quelle surprise!
A variety of pro-grade users helps avoid that trap.
(Me, I’m a software developer – my “pro” machine doesn’t need amazing graphics or quad SSD raid; it mostly just needs a single SSD and a pile of fast – but not an insane core count – CPU, and adequate RAM – but could cope just fine with onboard video.
[I do Windows for work, so it’s a handbuilt i7-7700 with a mere 16GB and a moderate SSD, at home. Also doubles as a gaming PC with a relatively serious GPU.]
Someone who does a lot of virtualization might want as much RAM as the chipset can handle, and lots of cores, even if not as fast.
A video guy needs a way to suck in 4K+ video in realtime, and store it in realtime, and fast CPU and ram for postprocessing.
Rendering or 3D art or the like? GPU is the bottleneck, ideally several of them that can do whatever the Mac API version of Crossfire/SLI is.
Someone else might need an immense amount of storage and lots of cores, say if they were mad enough to want to run a giant database on a Mac Pro, or perhaps some sorts of scientific computing.
One Pro To Rule Them All becomes awkward …)
Sure, but the current i7-7567U has the same TDP as the old i7-4578U in the 2014 iMac.
(Equally, it’s not quite as simple to skip forward 4 generations with “just a chip update”, since the sockets are different, the PCIE revision is different, and the 8G CPU supports DDR4, which might be desired.
It’s not quite as simple as “just source a different CPU”; it’d require at least some redesign of the motherboard.)
You can’t?
Sounds like a personal problem.
(“Sure, they update the iMac and MacBook Pro regularly, but they obviously want to kill the Mac, even if they released an iMac Pro and I don’t even know where this thesis is going…”)
This is likely the reason they’re doing a modular Pro in addition to the iMac Pro. The iMac Pro is the answer to the “just give me more raw power dammit” crowd. No, you can’t add cards but you’re unlikely to need to if your main issue was just power (and you can always simply sell one and buy another in 3 years to keep up, an approach which is probably about as much money as buying cards along the way).
A modular Pro, if done right, could perhaps more easily be tailored to the needs of highly specific segments where you start with a beefy, fast, CPU/SSD box with a good GPU and then connect/add on things that tailor the device.
Unhelpful sunglass-wearing trollbros aside, potential UX difficulties aren’t necessarily always obvious to developers who aren’t immersed in the work their software’s designed for. I can see a benefit from having users brought in as consultants, but I would also hope they could get swapped out occasionally, to prevent them from becoming too immersed in Apple’s own culture.
Here’s the core of the piece to me… from Ternus: (bolding mine)
““We said in the meeting last year that the pro community isn’t one thing,” says Ternus. “It’s very diverse. There’s many different types of pros and obviously they go really deep into the hardware and software and are pushing everything to its limit. So one thing you have to do is we need to be engaging with the customers to really understand their needs. Because we want to provide complete pro solutions, not just deliver big hardware, which we’re doing and we did it with iMac Pro. “
You really should take off your “poor me, victim of a conspiracy” hat and rewrite that, because you make some really great points that are buried in drama.
My use-case isn’t universal, either. But that’s just me. So many other commenters suggest otherwise. So many.
Haha, sorry. We’re all victims of Apple nowadays though. It’s hard to cope. 😉
Sure, all true, and I’d expect exactly that to all be the case. I fully expect that all those parts will be functionally nonreplaceable unless you happen to have other Mac Pro parts made by Apple. Which for CPU, whatever, boards and processors usually change in lock step anyway meaning the only upgrades even on PBS are usually within the same generation. But it’s criminal that on this probably $8000 computer, you’ll be stuck with whatever SSD and RAM you could afford in 2019 – even in 5 years when you could buy 5-10x the capacity easily.