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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > When did apple stop displaying the mac pro?

When did apple stop displaying the mac pro?
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Googer-Giger
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Dec 3, 2010, 01:14 AM
 
I went to the apple store the other day to get my sister an air. I hadn't been there for over a year; they stopped displaying the Mac Pro? I kinda don't understand why, they've always wanted to demonstrate their pro model with a keyboard or an awesome sound system or something. I guess I can finally accept that they're really catering to a consumer market heavy duty these days.

Jess
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shabbasuraj
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Dec 4, 2010, 01:46 AM
 
The Mac Pro line will be discontinued very soon. Don't worry.

"Apple is a mobile company now." SJ
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besson3c
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Dec 4, 2010, 01:55 AM
 
Originally Posted by shabbasuraj View Post
The Mac Pro line will be discontinued very soon. Don't worry.

"Apple is a mobile company now." SJ

They'd have to kill the iMac too then.
     
imitchellg5
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Dec 4, 2010, 01:57 AM
 
Originally Posted by shabbasuraj View Post
The Mac Pro line will be discontinued very soon. Don't worry.

"Apple is a mobile company now." SJ
What? You realise that Apple can be a mobile company and make desktops, right?

The Mac Pro is still been on display at my store, I've never been in a store without one out.
     
shabbasuraj
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Dec 4, 2010, 02:18 AM
 
Either by design or by neglect, it is apparent that Mac Pros are on the VERY back burner.

iMacs and consumer electronics is where it is at, Apple knows this, but will never admit it. (that they have no real future plans for the pro line).



I heard.
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Dec 4, 2010, 03:32 AM
 
Originally Posted by imitchellg5 View Post
What? You realise that Apple can be a mobile company and make desktops, right?

The Mac Pro is still been on display at my store, I've never been in a store without one out.
Same here.

Maybe the OP is living in a mobile war zone?
     
Waragainstsleep
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Dec 4, 2010, 10:32 AM
 
You can't get those extra "fashion" margins out of big enterprise customers. Thats why the Xserve has gone. They don't want to compete with IBM or Dell servers for data centre rack space. Apple wants products where they can make 50% or more. Can't be done when everyone else is using the same hardware as you and no-one cares how pretty your version is.

Interestingly you can get fashion margins from big businesses, but only from products being used by executives, like iPads and iPhones. These guys wouldn't know an Xserve from a toaster if they fell over it so they'll never sanction the extra costs for servers which they will never see or otherwise notice.
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Dec 4, 2010, 11:48 AM
 
Mac Pros are still popular with the design crowd and photo types.

I personally think they're overpriced though, and the fact that don't come with eSATA support in the box is a joke.
     
Googer-Giger  (op)
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Dec 4, 2010, 12:09 PM
 
I live in an area (Smith Haven) where the mall is almost entirely populated by teens. I guess you could say this for most malls though... I have been to other apple stores and mine seems to have way more girls taking pictures of themselves on photobooth than others.

I love having a tower and don't feel like finding odd screws and being afraid of breaking the thing just to add some ram. (My Mom's Mac Mini). I can understand having to use puddy scrapers to take the thing apart for a small appealing desktop, but I do not want to have to do that for my main machine. I am constantly switching HDs and messing around with hardware. I am your typical geek who has a room with a workbench crowded with assorted parts and takes P3's off the street just to play with them. I love hardware, which is good because I really don't understand any cool geek languages, like javascript or html or even unix code, aside from taking an intro to linux class last semester.

If shabbasuraj is right in the end, which is, unfortunately, seeming more right every time I think about it, than I will have to start getting into hackintoshes and buying high end iMacs.

And Eug, I completely agree, esata is something my mid-range custom PC boards have been coming with since 2006. Hell I bought a gigabyte LGA-775 board for 100 bucks 2 years ago and it's got 2. Maybe I should look into hacking that thing.
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Spheric Harlot
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Dec 4, 2010, 01:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
You can't get those extra "fashion" margins out of big enterprise customers. Thats why the Xserve has gone. They don't want to compete with IBM or Dell servers for data centre rack space. Apple wants products where they can make 50% or more. Can't be done when everyone else is using the same hardware as you and no-one cares how pretty your version is.
Mac Pros aren't marketed at enterprise. They're marketed at creative professionals.

A friend just bought an octacore for his studio, to replace his dead custom PC. He compared component prices for the westmere quads and the Logic board features, and the remaining price difference *easily* offset the cost of additional downtime required to configure and set up and optimize the Windows box for his use, which would've been done by a pro.

The Mac was a question of unpacking, sticking in the MADI card, installing a driver from the Internet (he'd never have put his Windows box online), and getting busy installing the production software. He's amazed at how comparatively smooth sailing it is (despite already having a 24" iMac at home and a 2006 MacBook which hasn't once let him down).
     
shabbasuraj
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Dec 4, 2010, 04:39 PM
 
I love MacPro's just as much as the other guy. But seriously, the line is stagnant, and Apple probably makes more profit in an hour selling i-Things then they do selling a months worth of Pro hardware.

Then I think about how affordable and powerful the iMacs come in performance to the MacPro's then all this 'cloud' talk (perhaps further reducing hardware requirements?), and then I look at the price of the Pro hardware... then I just SMH.

I thought one reason to move to intel was to increase the frequency of updates, and thus trigger a decrease in prices. (at least that is what I wanted, lol)

In the end, I think Apple will always make Pro computers, but never have a focus on them like they did in the past.

Sux.
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shabbasuraj
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Dec 4, 2010, 04:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
Mac Pros are still popular with the design crowd and photo types.

I personally think they're overpriced though, and the fact that don't come with eSATA support in the box is a joke.
true.

I also think that SJ is just gonna skip USB 3.0 altogether. (Like Blue-Ray.)
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Dec 4, 2010, 05:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by shabbasuraj View Post
true.

I also think that SJ is just gonna skip USB 3.0 altogether.
Considering that Intel probably will, too, and that LightPeak will be starting off at 10Gbps and presumably support bus power and actually be useful for things other than pure data storage (in contrast to eSATA), I don't see this as a problem.
     
Don Pickett
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Dec 5, 2010, 03:05 AM
 
I live across the street from an Apple Store. It has Mac Pros.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled paranoia.
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Thorzdad
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Dec 5, 2010, 09:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
Mac Pros are still popular with the design crowd and photo types.
That's rapidly changing, though. More and more, I'm seeing designers and photographers opt for the iMac, instead of the MacPro. The value prop with the iMac is just too strong against the MacPro.
     
Don Pickett
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Dec 6, 2010, 07:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
That's rapidly changing, though. More and more, I'm seeing designers and photographers opt for the iMac, instead of the MacPro. The value prop with the iMac is just too strong against the MacPro.
Production people and retouchers still get Mac Pros. Designers are getting iMacs because they don't need* the horsepower of the Pros. This is a version of how things used to be, which is designers getting the old production machines.

The fact that the Mac Pros aren't a huge part of Apple's sales is just a reflection of the computer marker as a whole: most people don't need* that much horsepower and are fine with a laptop or an iMac. The Pros have really become monster machines. There are only a few applications which will really saturate more than four cores, and those are pretty specialized. Even Photoshop rarely uses more than one core, much to my consternation. For someone whose computing needs consists of email, web, music and porn even the iMacs are overpowered.

I think, down the road, this will continue as more and more people move to things like the iPad, which is fine for probably half the people out there who don't do anything more stressful on their machines than watch YouTube videos. Machines like the Pro will continue to be sold, but they will be really targeted at people who need the horsepower, like Production/pre-press people, audio and video folks, scientific visualization and serious programming.

*I said need, not want. We all want 12-core 2.93 GHz machines, but not many of us would ever use the thing to its limit. I only have one application which really thrashes all my cores--X-Plane--and that's only when loading scenery. The next version of X-Plane is supposed to make use of all the cores you can throw at it, but it isn't out yet. And, like I said, even Photoshop only really uses one core most of the time. We've reached a point, for the time being, where the hardware has really leapt ahead of what most people will do with it.
( Last edited by Don Pickett; Dec 7, 2010 at 03:02 PM. )
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Dec 6, 2010, 09:46 PM
 
The Mac Pro will remain an invaluable workhorse for the imaging business.
Have burned out laptops, Mac Minis, and iMacs. Mac Pro is very different animal.
Cools well and adapts well.
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tooki
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Dec 15, 2010, 02:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
You can't get those extra "fashion" margins out of big enterprise customers. Thats why the Xserve has gone. They don't want to compete with IBM or Dell servers for data centre rack space. Apple wants products where they can make 50% or more. Can't be done when everyone else is using the same hardware as you and no-one cares how pretty your version is.
Sorry, but that's how you imagine it works, not how it does work. You've got it 180 degrees wrong. Enterprise hardware IS the high-margin gear (that and iPhones). The MacBooks and iMacs that Apple sells far larger volume of have much more modest margins because that's a much more price-sensitive market segment.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Dec 15, 2010, 02:25 PM
 
^ Word.

The higher up in the price bracket, the fewer sales, and the higher margins have to be to make the product worthwhile.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Dec 15, 2010, 10:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by tooki View Post
Sorry, but that's how you imagine it works, not how it does work. You've got it 180 degrees wrong. Enterprise hardware IS the high-margin gear (that and iPhones). The MacBooks and iMacs that Apple sells far larger volume of have much more modest margins because that's a much more price-sensitive market segment.
You are entitled to your opinion of course but I refute it utterly. Enterprise margins are in software and support. I've seen a company argue a £100 hard drive upgrade before thinking nothing of dropping £20k a license on software with no measurable return on investment and sometimes massive, instant depreciation in its value as an asset.

Enterprises usually have their own IT guys so OS is less of a consideration and everything comes down to spec and price. Thats true all the way up from the box running Office on the reception desk to the server racks. This drives hardware margins down for system builders.

Since your average home PC looks and more importantly works very much like the one on your desk at work, consumers expect prices to reflect that. Not so true of a 27" iMac. You don't see desks full of those in call centres.

Apple can make much higher margins on its consumer gear than its competitors for two reasons. Their products are superior. Aesthetically, in terms of build quality and most importantly the user experience. The second reason is their brand power, though I suspect this is largely a result of the first reason anyway.

If anyone could leverage their name in the server space, it would be IBM or Cisco. Or Intel themselves. Hasn't happened that way. Cisco make great money on their networking kit but their servers are much like the rest. I doubt they make much cash on the server boxes. Just another way into the commas cabinet. The only other brand to make real impact on the enterprise space is RIM, though most people would probably only know the name Blackberry. This is driven by executive demand for the handsets. They started out as status symbols of a sort, then filtered down to become an industry standard. Apple is choosing this road into the enterprise market.

I don't follow the financial results closely but a couple of years back, Dell were the number one PC vendor and there was one quarter where Apple made higher profits on revenue of ~$3 Billion than Dell did on ~$13 Billion. Thats revenue, not unit sales. This should tell you a lot.
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Dec 15, 2010, 10:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett View Post
There are only a few applications which will really saturate more than four cores, and those are pretty specialized. Even Photoshop rarely uses more than one core, much to my consternation. For someone whose computing needs consists of email, web, music and porn even the iMacs are overpowered.
Ummm. My computing needs consist of email, web, music and artwork, and I can thrash all my cores quite nicely.

Until Apple stops selling Logic Studio, Mac Pros ain't going anywhere.
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Dec 15, 2010, 11:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
You are entitled to your opinion of course but I refute it utterly. Enterprise margins are in software and support. I've seen a company argue a £100 hard drive upgrade before thinking nothing of dropping £20k a license on software with no measurable return on investment and sometimes massive, instant depreciation in its value as an asset.
tooki is talking specifically about Apple; Apple is generally not selling £20,000 worth of software licenses at a time.
     
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Dec 16, 2010, 12:56 AM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
Ummm. My computing needs consist of email, web, music and artwork, and I can thrash all my cores quite nicely.

Until Apple stops selling Logic Studio, Mac Pros ain't going anywhere.
Exactamundo. Mac Pro's aren't going anywhere, .... i.e., slow (read: forgotten) upgrade cycle.

There are upgraded iMac's coming in first quarter 2011, and probably no MacPro changes or price updates.

I can only presume that the raw performance numbers of these new machines will be awesome when compared to the Pro line.

Again as I stated earlier, either by design or by neglect... The MacPro's future looks bleak.
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Waragainstsleep
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Dec 16, 2010, 06:52 AM
 
Originally Posted by imitchellg5 View Post
tooki is talking specifically about Apple; Apple is generally not selling £20,000 worth of software licenses at a time.
I am talking about Apple. And that is exactly my point. Apple do not sell any massively expensive software to run on their servers so they don't make any money from them. And how many people do you think actually take out their £40k enterprise support plans? I've never met any in the UK. I've never even met anyone worth asking if they'd consider it.

Apple is a hardware company. Everything else they do is to drive sales of their hardware or put icing on the cake. They don't have enough products/services/etc to drive enterprise customers to stump up the above average margins for out of date hardware on the Xserves, so they don't sell the volume they want. Simple.

A quick and rough comparison gives the following:

Stock entry level Xserve:
Quad Core 2.26GHz Xeon (5500), 3GB RAM (1066MHz), 160GB HDD, Single PSU.
£2451
Dell POS
Quad Core 2.93GHz Xeon (3470), 4GB RAM (1333MHz), 250GB HDD, Single PSU, dual ethernet to match Xserve.
Linux 6.0 with 1 years support
£1766

This is what I'm talking about.
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Dec 16, 2010, 11:37 AM
 
Originally Posted by shabbasuraj View Post
Exactamundo. Mac Pro's aren't going anywhere, .... i.e., slow (read: forgotten) upgrade cycle.

Again as I stated earlier, either by design or by neglect... The MacPro's future looks bleak.
Don't talk wet. The reason Mac Pros aren't on a fast update cycle is because the people who use them tend to have slower update cycles themselves.
It's the difference between professional and ADHD-riddled consumer.
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Don Pickett
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Dec 17, 2010, 03:05 AM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
Ummm. My computing needs consist of email, web, music and artwork, and I can thrash all my cores quite nicely.
Not with web, email and iTunes. ssh in from another machine and watch top output as you work. You will never work more than one core at a time with basic stuff. The load may be spread out over two or more cores, but it will almost never equal more than 100% of one core, total. It's even a little depressing watching Photoshop: many parts of the program are still poorly threaded and don't use more than one core.

You are entitled to your opinion of course but I refute it utterly. Enterprise margins are in software and support. I've seen a company argue a £100 hard drive upgrade before thinking nothing of dropping £20k a license on software with no measurable return on investment and sometimes massive, instant depreciation in its value as an asset.
Absolutely true.

Tale a look at IBM's 10-K sometime. IBM makes some money on hardware, but where they rake in the case is service contracts for their hardware and business services. IBM will sell you a z-series machine for not too much (in mainframe terms). The real cost will be the maintenance and support contract, which could run into the millions annually, and will have to be re-upped every year for as long as you own the machine. This has always been the way with big iron.

The other side of the coin is the level of service required with those contracts. If your IBM mainframe goes down, and needs to be brought back to life quickly, IBM will literally put a tech on a plane with a replacement part so you're up and running the next day.
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Dec 17, 2010, 03:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett View Post
Not with web, email and iTunes.
I know. It's the music bit which thrashes the cores.
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Dec 17, 2010, 06:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
Don't talk wet. The reason Mac Pros aren't on a fast update cycle is because the people who use them tend to have slower update cycles themselves.
It's the difference between professional and ADHD-riddled consumer.
^ Yup as I respond with my 2006, 2 x 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro. It's still shredding through Logic Pro 9 like a champ and at this point if I want an upgrade, I'll add RAM.

But first I shall be replacing this grey-haired Tascam US-122 with a MOTU Ultralite or an mk3 (haven't decided yet) for Christmas. Unless of course, someone wants to spring a donation for an Apogee Ensemble.
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Don Pickett
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Dec 17, 2010, 07:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
I know. It's the music bit which thrashes the cores.
That falls under what I said before: music and video apps some some of the few, along with scientific apps and the next version of X-Plane, which will seriously thrash multiple cores. And, even than, it's difficult to get video apps to really use more then six cores at a time.

My old dual 2GHz G5 is more than fast enough for every day use, and it's going on seven years old.
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Dec 17, 2010, 08:33 PM
 
Nobody buys a Mac Pro for "everyday use", unless it's everyday studio use.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Dec 17, 2010, 08:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by ebuddy View Post
^ Yup as I respond with my 2006, 2 x 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro. It's still shredding through Logic Pro 9 like a champ and at this point if I want an upgrade, I'll add RAM.

But first I shall be replacing this grey-haired Tascam US-122 with a MOTU Ultralite or an mk3 (haven't decided yet) for Christmas. Unless of course, someone wants to spring a donation for an Apogee Ensemble.
Do take a look at the Metric Halo stuff, if it's not out of budget. Different class from MotU, but amazing stuff.
     
Don Pickett
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Dec 18, 2010, 01:29 AM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Nobody buys a Mac Pro for "everyday use", unless it's everyday studio use.
There are people who buy them for everyday use. They tend to have a lot more money than do I.
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tooki
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Dec 18, 2010, 07:21 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
You are entitled to your opinion of course but I refute it utterly. Enterprise margins are in software and support.
Uhhh… wut? Yes and no. It's definitely true that the big money in enterprise IT is in software and support. I never claimed otherwise. But what is indisputably true is that the profit margin on the hardware is much higher on high-end gear than it is on low-end. (And no, I'm not just talking about Apple, this applies to Dell, HP, etc. as well.) The profit on the hardware is augmented with the profit from support contracts.

How do I know about the margins on Apple products? Because I sold them for years.

Low-end gear, like desktop computers, are much more price-sensitive, and much lower profit-margin, than the high-end gear like workstations and (real) servers. (Cheap desktops running Windows Server are still cheap desktops.)

The profit margin (the percentage of the sale price that is profit) is much higher on a Mac Pro than it is on an iMac or MacBook.

Sure, an IT department will be very price-sensitive when buying 200 desktops for a call center. A $100 upgrade to 200 machines adds up to a lot of money. But they won't balk at a $100 upgrade to a new $20,000 server they're buying, because it's not the same thing at all.
     
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Dec 18, 2010, 07:25 AM
 
Originally Posted by imitchellg5 View Post
tooki is talking specifically about Apple; Apple is generally not selling £20,000 worth of software licenses at a time.
Actually I wasn't specifically talking about Apple: the profit margin on a Dell Vostro is much smaller than on a high-end Dimension workstation. This really applies to the whole industry.

But regardless, Apple's strategy with software is to sell the software cheap and sell the support expensive. Ever take a look at the cost of a Mac OS X Server support contract? Yikes!


Anyway, the original question was why the Mac Pro isn't on display at some Apple stores: that's simple. The people who need Mac Pros generally aren't n00bs who need or even want assistance, so they order them online. Apple Stores are geared towards the everyday consumer, not the true pro. (This is also why the Mac mini, which sells rather poorly at retail, is actually one of Amazon's most popular products.)
     
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Dec 18, 2010, 11:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by tooki View Post
Uhhh… wut? Yes and no. It's definitely true that the big money in enterprise IT is in software and support. I never claimed otherwise. But what is indisputably true is that the profit margin on the hardware is much higher on high-end gear than it is on low-end. (And no, I'm not just talking about Apple, this applies to Dell, HP, etc. as well.) The profit on the hardware is augmented with the profit from support contracts.

How do I know about the margins on Apple products? Because I sold them for years.

Low-end gear, like desktop computers, are much more price-sensitive, and much lower profit-margin, than the high-end gear like workstations and (real) servers. (Cheap desktops running Windows Server are still cheap desktops.)

The profit margin (the percentage of the sale price that is profit) is much higher on a Mac Pro than it is on an iMac or MacBook.

Sure, an IT department will be very price-sensitive when buying 200 desktops for a call center. A $100 upgrade to 200 machines adds up to a lot of money. But they won't balk at a $100 upgrade to a new $20,000 server they're buying, because it's not the same thing at all.
The margins on the high end gear might be higher in some cases, but its clearly not high enough for Apple. Unlike their consumer hardware. They have never wanted to go toe-to-toe in a highly competitive space unless its one they have created and dominate.
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Dec 19, 2010, 02:04 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Nobody buys a Mac Pro for "everyday use", unless it's everyday studio use.
I've running a four core for everyday home use.
Couple of eight cores in the studio.
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Dec 19, 2010, 02:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by ebuddy View Post
But first I shall be replacing this grey-haired Tascam US-122 with a MOTU Ultralite or an mk3 (haven't decided yet) for Christmas.
I wouldn't be going MotU unless it's the high-end stuff (and even then the QC's so bad you have to go through five of them to get a good one). My favourite "reasonable budget" stuff at the moment is the Focusrite Saffire range - perhaps worth a squizz at. Or, as Spher reckons, a Metric Halo.
Been inclined to wander... off the beaten track.
That's where there's thunder... and the wind shouts back.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Dec 19, 2010, 03:16 PM
 
     
tooki
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Dec 19, 2010, 08:51 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
The margins on the high end gear might be higher in some cases, but its clearly not high enough for Apple. Unlike their consumer hardware. They have never wanted to go toe-to-toe in a highly competitive space unless its one they have created and dominate.
That doesn't even make sense. Just because Apple sells 10x as many iMacs as Mac Pros doesn't mean they're a market not worth being in.

Honestly, Apple is now one of the best-managed companies out there. Do you really think that you or I somehow better understand their market and customers than they do? (Apple may act arrogant towards customers sometimes, but I'm absolutely certain that even that is calculated.)
     
Drakino
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Dec 19, 2010, 11:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by Googer-Giger View Post
I went to the apple store the other day to get my sister an air. I hadn't been there for over a year; they stopped displaying the Mac Pro?
All the Apple stores are in holiday mode now, and the smaller stores usually clear out a section to turn into an express sales area. At one store I went to, they cleared out the Mac Pro and Apple TV for this area. Odds are, the same happened at the store you went to. They still could sell a Mac Pro, they just couldn't justify the room for demo compared to meeting demands for what people will be placing under a Christmas tree.

Originally Posted by shabbasuraj
I also think that SJ is just gonna skip USB 3.0 altogether. (Like Blue-Ray.)
Doubtful. Apple at this time doesn't want to add a third party USB controller onto their motherboards, and then have to divide up physical ports between the third party controller and the onboard one. Apple will have USB 3.0 ports on their computer once either Intel or NVidia bakes it into their chipsets. There will be strong demand in the future for USB 3.0, much more demand then for BluRay. Firewire is nearly dead (with USB 3 finally incorporating some of the better parts of Firewire), and Lightpeak is too far off to be a valid substitute for USB 3.
<This space under renovation>
     
Don Pickett
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Dec 20, 2010, 01:40 AM
 
Originally Posted by Drakino View Post
Firewire is nearly dead (with USB 3 finally incorporating some of the better parts of Firewire), and Lightpeak is too far off to be a valid substitute for USB 3.
Firewire's not dead. It's a niche product and, in those niches, it's firmly established. I don't see it disappearing any time soon, nor do I see Apple abandoning it, as some of those niches are Apple's loyal customers.

As for USB 3.0, I will believe it when I see it. Th early benchmarks I've seen for USB 3.0 devices show them being about as fast as Firewire 800, but not faster. If Intel wanted to convince the makers of pro audio and video gear to abandon Firewire, they needed to be significantly faster, not just a little.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
shabbasuraj
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Dec 20, 2010, 02:11 AM
 
USB 3... 2010 version of eSata (internal Apple Memo)
blabba5555555555555555555555555555555555555
     
Veltliner
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Dec 20, 2010, 02:42 AM
 
Originally Posted by shabbasuraj View Post
USB 3... 2010 version of eSata (internal Apple Memo)
Which would mean: we won't do that one, either.
     
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Dec 20, 2010, 06:22 AM
 
USB 3.0 adds lots of bandwidth, which is always nice but not really urgent, and bumps up the amount of power the port has to deliver in the base version (Apple implements the charging supplement to USB 2.0, which boosts the amps even more). eSATA cuts the latency, which is a different thing altogether. We have yet to see the figures for LightPeak and how it is implemented, so it's hard to guess on that latency, but Intel is suggesting that it will be fast enough to replace even PCIe. If so, USB 3.0 will be a parenthesis, and with the problems SATA has of coping with SSDs, LightPeak should replace SATA as well. In any case, SATA is not too long for this world.

Intel won't add USB 3.0 in the next chipset version (early 2011), and they will have LightPeak ready for the version after that (late 2011-early 2012, probably), so USB 3.0 will show up at the same time as LightPeak. Intel is basically killing USB 3.0 because it didn't go in the direction they wanted, but since AMD and nVidia seem to ignore it as well, they're hardly alone in that respect.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
erics
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Dec 20, 2010, 11:27 AM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett View Post
I live across the street from an Apple Store. It has Mac Pros.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled paranoia.
too funny received 6 mac pro and an xserve and haven't quite got to the last box for deployment.
oh no, are they all obsolete now?
LOL!
     
Don Pickett
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Dec 20, 2010, 02:30 PM
 
While we're sorta on the subject: did Firewire 1600 and 3200 go the way of Duke Nukem Forever?
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
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Dec 20, 2010, 03:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
USB 3.0 adds lots of bandwidth, which is always nice but not really urgent, and bumps up the amount of power the port has to deliver in the base version (Apple implements the charging supplement to USB 2.0, which boosts the amps even more). eSATA cuts the latency, which is a different thing altogether. We have yet to see the figures for LightPeak and how it is implemented, so it's hard to guess on that latency, but Intel is suggesting that it will be fast enough to replace even PCIe. If so, USB 3.0 will be a parenthesis, and with the problems SATA has of coping with SSDs, LightPeak should replace SATA as well. In any case, SATA is not too long for this world.

Intel won't add USB 3.0 in the next chipset version (early 2011), and they will have LightPeak ready for the version after that (late 2011-early 2012, probably), so USB 3.0 will show up at the same time as LightPeak. Intel is basically killing USB 3.0 because it didn't go in the direction they wanted, but since AMD and nVidia seem to ignore it as well, they're hardly alone in that respect.

Light Peak compatibility in the next generation Mac Pro?

Looks like Intel is already building LIght Peak compatibility into their motherboards.

Intel has designed a prototype PCI Express card for desktop PCs as an add-on.[4] This would mean many people wouldn't need to buy a new motherboard for the new cable type. The card has two optical buses powering 4 ports. On many machines, however, such a card would not be able achieve the full 40Gbit/s bandwidth of four Light Peak ports, as that bitrate would require a 16× PCIe slot (1× PCIe is 4Gbit/s) for optimal performance, and most machines only have one 16× slot, usually occupied by a video card.
source:Light Peak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
     
ebuddy
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Dec 20, 2010, 06:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
I wouldn't be going MotU unless it's the high-end stuff (and even then the QC's so bad you have to go through five of them to get a good one). My favourite "reasonable budget" stuff at the moment is the Focusrite Saffire range - perhaps worth a squizz at. Or, as Spher reckons, a Metric Halo.
I feel ya on MOTU. A buddy of mine has the mkII and it was decent, but the 898mk3 costs more than I'm willing to pay for their converters. I was looking at the ultralite to get closer to the I/O count I'd like knowing that I'm skimping on quality AD/DA.

The more I thought about it though, I'm already accustomed to having only 2 I/Os with the Tascam and the most important thing to me is the substantial upgrade in AD/DA. Hence, I'll likely be going for a Duet (which resells well and remember I'm coming off a Tascam US-122 for the love of Pete) to see what I think of it after a few months. If I'm lovin' it, I'll ditch the Duet and struggle with the decision between the MH ULN-2 2d (rated slightly better in AD/DA) and the Apogee Ensemble for the I/Os I need.

My problem is I haven't heard an MH and they're nowhere around locally to get my hands on.
ebuddy
     
Spheric Harlot
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Dec 20, 2010, 06:21 PM
 
The ULN2 smashes anything MotU to smithereens. 'Specially the mic preamps.

If you get the 2d expanded version, the clock is even better.

Awesomely transparent interface. You literally don't hear it.

BTW, I really hate what I've heard from the MotU 828s - especially on drums (the converters go to shit on any HF stuff).
     
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Dec 21, 2010, 05:46 AM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
The ULN2 smashes anything MotU to smithereens.
Nah man. The HD192, when clocked off a Big Ben, is just about the best sound you can buy for "not stupid" money... ...provided you can find one which hasn't fallen apart in transit.

New units, fresh out of the box:
#1 LEDs no worky (missing segments).
#2 LEDs no worky (missing segments).
#3 Fan bearing fail, sounded like a tractor.
#4 XLR locks on back fail (so cables just fall out at random).
#5 Fully functional!

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
'Specially the mic preamps.
I wouldn't know about that. Rack of Focusrite ISA does that job.
Been inclined to wander... off the beaten track.
That's where there's thunder... and the wind shouts back.
     
 
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