In 25 years I’m probably telling my grandkids “back in the days we used to run a datacenter on genuine Apple Pro hardware, it was expensive, truly faster and built for performance”

It’s no surprise that Apple hasn’t done much to satisfy the Pro’s for the last years. All we see is consumer products like iPads and iPhones. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but the true hardcore Apple fanbase always was driven by the Pro’s and they are now put aside. The designers and the creatives, they were the “think different” people who have been loyal from the beginning. Is this group no longer considered of importance? Unfortunately.. yes. Let’s see the signs:

There have been a lot of product launches and between them all – for years – the Mac Pro has always been getting silent updates. In years like 2005/2006 the PowerMac’s got more attention because of being the first 64bit “consumer” system. Nowadays all Mac’s are running a 64bit architecture and there’s really not much of a difference in speed when comparing the current iMac to the Mac Pro. Sure there’s a theoretical difference, but in practice the iMac will catch up fast to the Mac Pro, also with large file processing. So, Mac Pro doesn’t give superior speed anymore.

The fabulous keynotes.. was there ever a Pro moment? They have never showed the Mac Pro much, or the Xserve. And look at the Mac Pro design.. it really hasn’t changed in 8 years. The Mac Pro today looks exactly like the first PowerMac G5 1.6 GHz (from 2003!) and that’s ridiculous for a progressive company like Apple. That’s a big sign on a product line not being that important. And what’s up with the two dinosaur DVD drives?

When looking at the MacBook Pro it sure has an advantage to the normal MacBook, but.. this usually didn’t take any longer than 6 months before the consumer MacBook was being updated to almost the same specs. MacBook and MacBook Pro, besides the screen size and aluminium, have become too close to each other. Today there are 2 species; the MacBook Air as the used-to-iPad consumer portable, and the Macbook Pro with the same 4 Gigs of RAM.

A lot of people don’t know Xserve was one of the best Apple products ever made. It was a commitment signal to business and IT professionals. An Xserve in any datacenter just says “it doesn’t get any better than this”. But Apple forgot to promote it! Over the years I talked to many IT professionals, but even the most technical people didn’t seem to know what the hell an Xserve was. In 2011 Apple decided to discontinue the Xserve because people weren’t buying them. For the Apple IT Pro’s this was an incomprehensible choice.

The art of minimalism is one of the key items of Apple’s success formula. It’s a focus thing where most companies would loose track, but Apple instead is never making any concessions. Ever. So after stopping the Xserve it’s likely they will wipe more Pro stuff, especially when it probably isn’t even 1% of total sales. This is a clear sign the Mac Pro is out of focus.

Why?
Based on sales reports over the years it’s obvious the Pro products aren’t the big buck for Apple. It’s all about the huge mass and quick growth, what can never be established through Pro customers. When analyzing Mac sales Pro stuff is losing ground for over years. This is a self conflicting issue, for one thing because the iMac has become so much faster and cheaper and is now a complete large screen product what makes it a great tool for professionals.

Do we blame them?
As a Pro we expect tools to be more extreme when compared to the need of normal consumer, because in a Pro environment we need the raw power. We need to process large files and there’s no time. And above all as a Pro we are OK with paying a thousand bucks more for a superior machine that let’s us make money.

What do I think is gonna happen?
The Mac Pro will be discontinued within a year. No doubt. There is no need for making an expensive product on such little turnover. The MacBook Pro wil stay around for longer but eventually will be merged to the Air family as a flat design, making it -again- a more simple product line up.

The alternatives
- Use the iMac! Sure, for less money you can own a fancy 27 inch all-in-one, but it’s no alternative when you really need PCI Express expansion.
- No more Xserve? Use the Mac Mini! OK, so where do we put the 6TB of swappable drives? Also any drive replacement will result in a complete demolition of the Mac Mini. Internal storage isn’t much and external storage wouldn’t be as fast. The Mac Mini has become a fast computer with extremely low power usage, but it’s more of a home consumer product than a high performance 24/7 server system. Let’s face it, you can’t take this seriously.

I would say “Apple, please don’t forget us Pro’s”, but that has already happened. For personal use I also have an iPad and an iPhone, but now I can’t imagine they’re coming out with new heavy use stuff to fulfill the needs of my company

MacRonald

Mixed sources based on sales reports

This entry was posted Woensdag, oktober 26, 2011 at 23:10 and is filed under MacRonald. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.