[mikeash]

The Mac Pro is pretty ancient at this point. If you see them in dev shops, it's because they simply don't have any other choice: if you want a powerful desktop Mac, then you buy the Mac Pro, even though it's three years old.

And even that is not necessarily true anymore. The iMac tends to beat it on many tasks now. At this point, people buy it because they really want to bring their own monitor, or they just can't imagine an iMac could be faster, or they are one of the few people doing something the Mac Pro is still better at.

[astrodust]

That's the bind Apple's in. The market for the Mac Pro is very small, and it's also extremely demanding, they're never happy.

The iMac has a much broader appeal, the market is demanding but not to the same extreme. Many designers use these machines because they've got great screens and acceptable levels of performance.

I'm not sure Apple can win in the Mac Pro space without losing a ton of money. HP and Dell make high-end workstations, but it's a very tiny market compared to their general desktop and server sales.

Apple likes to focus on products it can sell millions of, not tens of thousands.

[STRML]

I agree that segment is demanding, but there's really only one box we want to tick:

1. I want to legally run OSX on top-of-the-line hardware.

I don't want a fancy design that's unnecessarily difficult to rack-mount or store anywhere, I don't want to try out new ports while abandoning common ones, and I certainly don't want to be 3 years behind.

A matte black rectangle would be a lot better than this. Why the need to be so fancy, to the detriment of your actual users?

[mikeash]

I totally agree. I'm not surprised they've let it stagnate, and because of the problems you mention I fully expect them to just kill it outright at some point.

But none of that changes the fact that the Mac Pro is not "still very capable" as stated in the comment I replied to.

[astrodust]

Apple's take on that Pro machine was to give it an absurd amount of GPU power, and for Final Cut that's all you need.

It's terrible for rendering on CPU. It's limited in terms of expansion. It will never compete against a self-built machine.

Maybe they will kill it, but it'll be a shame if they do. The Xserve died for the same reasons: They couldn't field a competitive machine.

At some point maybe Apple will offer their OS for use on non-Apple hardware under some kind of "if it works, great" type basis, you know, for enthusiasts and people who need way more power than Apple can deliver. Maybe it'll be called something other than macOS, just like NeXTStep's OS became OpenStep?

[pier25]

> they're never happy

It's hard to be happy with that little trash can.

The tower models were great. It's a shame Apple stopped updating those.

[astrodust]

I know many people were happy with how small, quiet, and powerful they were for the sorts of things they were doing: Audio engineering and video editing.

They're not powerhouse workstations like they used to be where it's all about performance.