New Modular Mac Pro Not Available till 2019

[mm2margaret]

And, it's a GREAT Time to invest in your Hackintosh:

From CNET: No new Mac Pro until 2019!! - https://www.cnet.com/news/the-new-mac-pro-is-coming-in-2019/

(sorry, this post probably doesn't belong here, but for all you folks out there struggling building your Hackintoshes, what choice do you really have now?)

 

[trs96]

It's interesting that after the iMac Pro has been such a huge success and is selling so well that another year has been added to the date. It's not because they are waiting to develop an ARM based processor for it as some conspiracy theorists will claim. They just don't want to cannabalize sales of the new iMac Pro, their very expensive non-upgradable pro offering. That's the way Apple works these days. Here's the evidence, a direct quote from Tom Boger, senior director of Mac Hardware Product Marketing.

We know that there’s a lot of customers today that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro,” says Boger.

This is why Apple wants to be as explicit as possible now, so that if institutional buyers or other large customers are waiting to spend budget on, say iMac Pros or other machines, they should pull the trigger without worry that a Mac Pro might appear late in the purchasing year.

So does this mean the 2019 MP shows up on Jan. 1st, 2019 ? December 31st 2019 ? Sure makes Pro users feel that Apple really does care about them. Not really. Just think of all 6,1 Mac Pro users who started waiting for a refresh back in 2016. A reasonable amount of time. Now it will be three years later than that ? Apple is a trillion dollar company that can hire the best engineers and designers in the world. Why do they have to drag their feet like this ? Pro users have work to get done today not 1.5 years from now.

What Apple is claiming now is that they have hired creative professionals that will be using the 2019 Mac Pro to make it exactly what they want, in line with their workflows. See: Story by Matt Panzorino of Tech Crunch

This is a radically different approach to what Jobs would have done if he were still CEO. He was famously quoted as saying that the customer doesn't have any idea what they want or need as it doesn't even exist yet. Why would you even bother asking them ? So, this may be actually a good development for the Mac Pro end user. We will all find out sometime in '19. It's a good sign the future Pro lineup of Macs will not abandon the x86 chip architecture any time soon. I just can't see FCP X or Logic Pro being converted into iOS apps that run well on ARM based iMacs or Mac Pros and meet the needs of Pro Users.

 

[mars198]

Face it with apple your never going to really get the desktop system you want. Hackintosh is the only way to go for the foreseeable future. I really don’t ever plan to buy another desktop from Apple. They have returned to the days of being very expensive compared to the pc world. When I built my first computer about 30 years ago I had the choice of having a working XT for a couple of hundred dollars are a Mac for a couple of thousand. It was an easy choice to make. And so it seems that Apple is making it easy for the majority of would be consumers. We will build faster systems cheaper than apple until we can longer run MacOS. Then we will switch to another OS.

 

[trs96]

Here's the most important part of the quote from Tom Boger:

so that if institutional buyers or other large customers are waiting to spend budget on, say iMac Pros

Not a lot of hope there that they'll ever cater to those looking for an Apple desktop from $500 to $1000 that is customizable, modular and easily upgradeable. It's just not in Apple's DNA. Their philosophy has always been a "premium product at a premium price."

The Apple 1 was basically just a motherboard that sold for over 600 dollars ! Factoring in inflation, that's over 1000 dollars today.

Today they are selling for close to one million dollars at auction.

 

[Korreckj328]

Face it with apple your never going to really get the desktop system you want. Hackintosh is the only way to go for the foreseeable future. I really don’t ever plan to buy another desktop from Apple. They have returned to the days of being very expensive compared to the pc world. When I built my first computer about 30 years ago I had the choice of having a working XT for a couple of hundred dollars are a Mac for a couple of thousand. It was an easy choice to make. And so it seems that Apple is making it easy for the majority of would be consumers. We will build faster systems cheaper than apple until we can longer run MacOS. Then we will switch to another OS.

I will say this though. With the birth of feasible eGPU's, iMacs are looking nicer and nicer to me. But I'm not a video editor. I just like playing a few games.

 

[pastrychef]

Here's the most important part of the quote from Tom Boger:

so that if institutional buyers or other large customers are waiting to spend budget on, say iMac Pros

Not a lot of hope there that they'll ever cater to those looking for an Apple desktop from $500 to $1000 that is customizable, modular and easily upgradeable. It's just not in Apple's DNA. Their philosophy has always been a "premium product at a premium price."

The Apple 1 was basically just a motherboard that sold for over 600 dollars ! Factoring in inflation, that's over 1000 dollars today.

Today they are selling for close to one million dollars at auction.

I think the Power Mac G3/G4s of the late 90s to mid 2000s and the Mac Pros 1,1-5,1 represented very good "bang for the buck". They will also be the last time we have easily upgradeable Macs. Since Steve Jobs passed away, Apple seems to have focused much more on profit margins.

Nowadays, it seems like Apple tries to make Macs "disposable". I think their objective is to make us choose a system with the specs you need for the foreseeable future. Then, just trash them when they no longer fit our needs and buy a new one.

 

[trs96]

Since Steve Jobs passed away, Apple seems to have focused much more on profit margins.

Nowadays, it seems like Apple tries to make Macs "disposable". I think their objective is to make us choose a system with the specs you need for the foreseeable future. Then, just trash them when they no longer fit our needs and buy a new one.

Tim Cook is primarily a businessman with an MBA from Duke University, not a coder or hardware guy. He has helped make Apple into the most profitable/valuable company ever since he was hired in 1998. He moved all the manufacturing (with the exception of the 2013 Mac Pro) of Apple products to contractors in China. They can make things really fast and cheap.

The iPhone and iOS are the main reasons for this massive valuation growth/ profits of the company since 2007.

Apple now expects iPhone owners to upgrade every two years, even when the phone costs close to 1000 USD. You can actually do that because a new iPhone is released every Fall. Why build something that well and sell it for that high a price and then expect buyers to upgrade every two years or less ? That's right, it's all about profits, the bottom line. In not too long there will be more iPhones than people on planet earth.

The problem with Mac desktops is the long refresh cycle, if they only update the Mac Pro every 6 years that leaves a lot of pro users with old non-upgradable machines that can't get the job done. Maybe the new modular Mac Pro will be an answer to this problem. Maybe people will actually buy it. They may keep on building them only in the USA. I can only hope so.

 

[oldMac7]

The pushed-out timeline may have something to do with monitors and T2 chip production.

It doesn't seem likely Apple will sell a Mac Pro unless they can also sell you an Apple branded monitor at the same time. I know there's the LG ones in the Apple Store, but they don't maximize profit potential that way, as opposed to one with a premium "look" to the enclosure that matches the Apple space gray aesthetic of the iMac Pro. They are selling space gray accessories now. FreeSync 2 might also be on the table now that select Radeon based eGPUs are officially supported.

T2 chip production may also be a factor. Apple may only have supply for the iMac Pro at this time because the Mac Pro was not a consideration when they engineered the iMac Pro.

As for the conspicuous use of the word "modular" the implication is that the Mac Pro will be made of modules. Yeah, I know, not a great leap of logic there, but what I mean is separate enclosures as opposed to all inside one case. Perhaps the idea is that the CPU module offers a choice of a LGA2066 module or a LGA1151 module, which looks similar to a Mac Mini, slightly larger to accommodate the appropriate cooling solution, which then sits on top of the eGPU module with the choice of enthusiast cards from RX 560 up to Vega 64, or workstation module housing one or more WX 9100 for example.

The fact that there are no info leaks from sources connected the manufacturing side may suggest that development has yet to get that far. Its fun to speculate, which is all this is, but if you read all this I'd love to hear your predictions.