Tim Cook reveals 'great' update for Mac Pro
Apple bobbing ahead
Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed the Mac Pro range will be updated in 2013 with "something really great".
Insubstantial Ram and processor tweaks to Apple's Mac Pro line had fans up in arms this week, prompting the removal of the machine's "New" tag on the company's online store, MacRumours reports.
Without the addition of Thunderbolt, USB 3.0 or a processor upgrade beyond Intel's dated Westmere offerings, fans felt Apple had a lot to answer for, with one disgruntled punter writing to the Cupertino CEO directly, seeking an unlikely clarification.
To the customer's surprise, Tim Cook replied, leaking previously unknown information about its Pro range.
"Our Pro customers like you are really important to us. Although we didn't have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at [this week's] event, don't worry as we're working on something really great for later next year," he wrote.
The message was posted to a Facebook Mac Pro page earlier this week.
While any ol' fanboi can fabricate a letter and post it in a forum, Apple confirmed the information to various sources, pushing the boat out further to reveal: “Apple corrects to say desktop updates for 2013 applies only to Mac Pro and not iMac.”
As an iMac update is overdue too, the reveal could be seen as indication that Apple's desktop-in-a-display computer will see a refresh in 2012. ®
COMMENTS
Low hanging fruit
The really strange thing is, you'd think that the Mac Pro's would be the easiest thing to update compared with the massive reengineering that presumably needs to go on with a laptop/Air device.
Lob in a new motherboard, buy a job lot of Ivy Bridge chips and away you go. They presumably couldn't care less about Pro customers, despite protests to the contrary.
So .... Tim Cook is saying don't buy a Mac Pro this year, wait until next year?
I reckon it's going to be
a convergence of the Mac Pro, iPhone and iMac lines into one monstrous unwieldy aluminium clad giant screened lifestyle device. It will require the optional iSackBarrow in order to carry it around.
On the plus side it will have a 32" retina display, just to stick it to Samsung Galaxy lines.
Thing is..
Apple is, or was, in part a media content creation PC company. And the Mac Pro was never even remotely a business desktop. What business PC user needs dual socket. 12 core desktops? But for video work, boy howdy.
Thing is, you can get a modern workstation class PC with a current high end gaming or even workstation class GPU for the price of the 2.5 year old Mac Pro and its 2009 gaming GPU.
Of course, Apple's solving this problem on other ways. They have the only pro video editor still on the market that's 32-bit only and doesn't use GPU acceleration (Final Cut Pro 7). Plus, they released an upgrade that's not really an upgrade at all, but a scaled down, appified, not compatible, not pro replacement, FCP X.
In short, Apple is trying really hard to kill their pro market. I mean, seriously, they couldn't come up with a Mac Pro replacement each year? I'm guessing they dump the Pro entirely and introduce an iMac Pro. Which will be useless to actual pros, but appealing to FCPX prosumers and die hard fanbois.
And this is clearly what they're going to keep doing. Look at the Mac market.. last quarter, only 18% of Apple's business. Most of their money comes from one iPhone and one iPad refresh each year. For the Mac. they need 10-something models. So it's consolidation time. Same reason all laptops will be "Air" models... no optical or HDDs anymore.
?
The decline and fall of an apple....
... is it already happening? non-announcements, competitors biting at their heels, little in the way of vision of excitement - more of the same, and in this case, less.
