15 ms·

The Last Mac Pro

60 points by arm 10y ago

mhd 10y ago
I kinda get why "regular" users are ditching PCs for mobile platforms, but never quite got why developers are on the laptop bandwagon. Is coding in cafes and visiting conferences that big a use case? Or is this another symptom of a screwed work-life balance where using your work computer at home (i.e. in your "spare time") is that important?
- oakesm9 10y ago
  For me, it's a symptom of open plan offices. If you need to work together with someone it's too distracting to do it at your desk right next to everyone else, therefore, you need to go to a small meeting room. If you only had a desktop computer, you wouldn't be able to take your work with you.
  - evan_ 10y ago
    yep, and it's pretty trivial to just plug in a monitor when I'm at my desk- everything else is wireless and Just Works™, so it's not like I'm giving up a whole lot for the convenience.
- mzl 10y ago
  For me it is about simplifying where I work. Most of the time I work at my desk in the office. Since I have a laptop as the main machine, I am not bound to that desk. I can move to a sofa, we can go to a conference room to discuss some code, I can work from home if I want to, and so on. Previously, I had both a laptop and a desktop, but there was always some extra effort to make sure everything was synced between the machines.
- auggierose 10y ago
  If you don't need the power of the desktop (which most developers don't, macbook pro 15inch is just fine), then why would you forgo the mobility of a laptop?
- jmkni 10y ago
  It is nice having all of your stuff on one computer. At my desk I use a dock to connect 3 high resolution monitors to my laptop via a single USB-C port, which works really well as a replacement for a desktop PC, then I can disconnect it, go to a coffee shop or a conference and continue working without even having to close my IDE. Now we are at the point where your laptop can confortably drive a couple of monitors when you want it to, but can also be portable and light with good battery life when you want it to, you don't need a desktop PC. Also, if you work in multiple places, you can have a couple of screens and a keyboard/mouse on your desk in each place, rock up with your laptop, and plug in.
  - notheguyouthink 10y ago
    Yea, in reverse i don't get the confusion/argument for desktops. In this day and age, i feel like the defense should be on the side of desktops. For a good portion of work a laptop can do everything a "desktop" can, including big monitors and additional keyboard/mouse. And it has the added benefit of taking it anywhere. It's a desktop when you want it, and a laptop when you want it. Sure, there are plenty of resource intensive applications that would be better suited for a desktop, but i highly value the mobility. And i work in a very strict 9-5, (nearly) no work is taken home past clock-out. Barring freak outages of course (i have yet to see one in my time here, \o/) edit: Fighting my comma demon.
    - lmm 10y ago
      > Sure, there are plenty of resource intensive applications that would be better suited for a desktop, but i highly value the mobility. Can you explain this part? What's the mobility getting you that's worth maybe halving your RAM (for example) for?
      - notheguyouthink 10y ago
        Well for me, development in cli. I do nothing that requires 16+Gig of ram. 8 is plenty for me (what i have in my macbook pro, iirc). Sure, ram is always nice, but i am able to do my work and take my laptop (which i also code for fun on) wherever i am. Hotels/couch/offices/etc. I'm not stuck to a single spot, in a single room, in a single building. It's a really, really important feature to me. Even just at my house i move around the house frequently.
- jbob2000 10y ago
  Sometimes I like to code on the couch. Also guilty of coding in the bathroom. And sometimes I code on the train into work. There is something tactile about a laptop that a desktop is missing. It's a thing I can carry around, it becomes an extension of my body in a way. This thing is mine. Whereas a desktop - that's my company's computer, or that's my home office computer - it's not mine. It's not a work-life balance thing, I just like carrying my tools around.
  - douche 10y ago
    > Also guilty of coding in the bathroom I'm curious how that works, and what brings you to do that? Unless it's some sort of especially heinous open-office setup, and the only way to grab any sort of privacy and peace is to post up in one of the stalls.
    - jbob2000 10y ago
      Not the office bathroom, the home one. Mostly because I'm hot on the chase to get something to work and don't want mother nature to interfere, haha.
- kris-s 10y ago
  For work I prefer laptops simply because they are more flexible, I can bring it into a conference room, take it to a quiet corner if my semi-open office is noisy, etc. The CPU power of any recent MacBook Pro has been more than sufficient for web and iOS development. On personal side projects: I enjoy working in cafes & libraries.
- bas_ta 10y ago
  I currently use my laptop for both work and play and it's kind of convenient to not be tied to my desk :)
- ssharp 10y ago
  What do developers need a desktop for when laptops are both portable and can act as desktops when you plug them into a docking station? Is the ability to have an easily expanded computer that necessary? Even for a lot of "pro" use that is hardware intensive, like music production, is pretty well-facilitated on a laptop these days. I don't work with video, so maybe that's another story.
- chrisbennet 10y ago
  I'm a developer/consultant so I need to take my laptop to clients a few times a month. The rest of the time is sits closed on my desk, running a couple of big monitors. Data point: I have a MacBook Pro and my previous laptop was also a MBP. My next laptop wont be.
  - notheguyouthink 10y ago
    Have you picked one yet? I'm also in the same boat, but i'm unsure which i want atm.
    - chrisbennet 10y ago
      I'm leaning towards the "New Razor Blade". I wish it had a bigger screen though. My 2nd choice would be the Dell 5510. If it wasn't for the Dell's a weak GPU, it would be my first choice. BTW: I'm one of those weirdo Windows developers so I don't have the any Linux concerns. I don't use my laptop for games but I want a decent GPU for graphics now and machine learning in the future.
      - notheguyouthink 10y ago
        Ah hah, yea i'll be installing Linux. But quality hardware is quality hardware. Appreciate your feedback!
- nilved 10y ago
  Part of it is that I need to bring my work computer home since I am on-call for server issues. The other part is that I don't have a designated working space -- I work wherever I want to. I would get restless having only a desktop available.
- stephenr 10y ago
  For a number of years laptops have been "good enough" for most developer needs, and they provide much greater flexibility. Using my laptop and occasionally iPad, I've worked from at least 4 different homes, a casino, 3 short term rental houses, a couple of client offices, and a beach in Thailand over the last ~7 years.
  - auvi 10y ago
    If you don't mind sharing the details, what was your internet setup in a beach in Thailand?
    - stephenr 10y ago
      4G enabled iPad mini + Panic's Prompt.app for iOS. It wasn't a regular thing, just resolving some access issues (on servers) for colleagues (at an all remote agency). Having said that, I've also used a Thai 4G sim to tether (and allow colleagues to tether) for data while in Melbourne and while in California.
    - 3chelon 10y ago
      If you don't mind sharing the details, what was your job on a beach in Thailand? ;)
- 3chelon 10y ago
  Working on a desktop is just so limiting. I cannot imagine doing it in this day and age. I work at home, in cafes, on the train and yes, sometimes at the office too. At home and at the office I have a couple of big monitors to plug in and - hey presto - I have a fantastically large desktop. It's simply the best of all worlds. And the work/life balance is definitely not screwed if you spend half the week working from home, like I always aim to.
  - arvinsim 10y ago
    > And the work/life balance is definitely not screwed if you spend half the week working from home, like I always aim to. Working at home is still work.
- dhruvmittal 10y ago
  So, my company issued development machine is a beefy desktop full of xeons and graphics cards (necessary for the specific work I do). It's fantastic for 95% of my work life but sometimes I want a computer in a meeting with me to take some detailed notes, have a document/code on hand, or give a presentation. Obviously, there are ways around all of those situations. I can email my slides to the presentation machines in the conference rooms, etc. But they don't really beat the convenience of just grabbing the computer I used to make the ppt and knowing that everything will work. Sometimes I get quite jealous of colleagues with laptops. And then, of course, there are the aforementioned cases of travel or wanting to work from home instead of coming in.
  - thedaemon 10y ago
    You need a Surface Pro. It's a great tool for what you want.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Maybe it's just me, but almost every office I've visited in the past 8 years has been mostly laptop-driven for 99% of their staff. Do you mind telling what industry you work in, that you a) use a desktop and b) aren't afforded a laptop as well?
- gutnor 10y ago
  In addition to other responses: there is not much difference in practice between a desktop and a laptop in a large office environment. Sure developer gets nicer than average desktop, but generally something in line of what you can have on a laptop and they are generally stuck with that config until the next company refresh. So the choice becomes a desktop or a laptop with exactly the same configuration and the same effective extensibility. Why would you not take the laptop, which also allows you to work from home, carry at meetings, ... ?
- PaulRobinson 10y ago
  For me, the work machine is there for a web browser (through which I also do email), Slack, and a term for vim, tests and docker. I don't really need heavy compute in front of me - all that's done up in AWS, GCP, etc. I could in theory get away with a Chromebook with a really decent term: I'd ssh into a VPS and tmux in there, and do my workflow would be over there. I have a colleague who has this setup and he's able to successfully work on nothing more than an iPad Pro if he needs to, including with remote pairing with another developer, talking to each other via various voice call apps on his phone. It works surprisingly well. As to form factor, being able to take my code into meetings is frequently useful, being able to move desks to pair side by side with somebody in another part of the building, that is all useful. A powerful desktop would be interesting for me if I wanted to do more compute in front of me, and might even be cost effective if the right sort of kit was priced at the right level. For 3D animators/CAD types, I imagine it's essential.
  - thedaemon 10y ago
    As a 3D animator, I can say I am still using desktops and have yet to be able to transfer to a laptop. I have tried a few times, but it's just not the same. As a laptop, the screens are too small, touchpads are useless, they become leg melting, the video cards options are lacking or pointless in a laptop. Maybe one day, but I still don't see it happening for me in the next 5-10 years.
- rhinoceraptor 10y ago
  I take my laptop home every day, it's come in handy several times when I had to work from home for various reasons. I never check it outside of work, though.
- Tehnix 10y ago
  >Is coding in cafes and visiting conferences that big a use case Is that really the only place you use your computer? I'm a consultant, working part time at an office, and I am doing a masters and generally just enjoy coding as a hobby. My use case is something like: I develop on my couch, I develop at home, I develop on the train, I develop in the dining room, I develop in my own room, I sometimes write some quick code while on the bus during my commute, and I write code at my university. I also bring this same computer to work and use it to develop there. Oh, and I also sometimes enjoy gaming with my friends at their place, with the same computer. Why on earth would I restrict myself to a stationary computer when I can have a portable one that I can take everywhere I want with no hassle? In my circles the only people that have a stationary computer are people that use it for gaming, and even then they still have a laptop on which they do everything else.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    I personally can't imagine using my work-provided computer for anything other than work. Too much potential for my employer to claim my hobby projects, for viruses to compromise client IP, for otherwise perfectly legal activities done on company property to terminate your employment. The risk / reward ratio is just too high.
    - Zelmor 10y ago
      Virtualbox.
      - falcolas 10y ago
        Virtualbox doesn't solve the problem of performing non-work related tasks on a corporate computer. It would help resolve some of the concerns about sandboxing data, but only some.
        Zelmor 10y ago
        It leaves no traces on the host, so your work is invisible. Just encrypt it and there you go.
- macintux 10y ago
  I work from home; more accurately, I work from wherever the hell I want. Spent two weeks camping alongside a river in Florida this spring, working mostly from my tent's equivalent to a screened-in porch. Yes, a laptop is vital.
- falcolas 10y ago
  I have a laptop, because that's what was issued to me. If I recall correctly, it's a lingering symptom of not having enough desk spaces in the company's early days, so people needed the flexibility to move around. I appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from just about anywhere (though the practical limitations of working through a VPN mean that it's not "just about anywhere"), but I also wish sometimes I wasn't able to do "just one more thing" from wherever I happen to be at the time. Really, I'd just prefer to have a desktop running Ubuntu, so I could match my production environment that I code for. But for some reason that's just not allowed.
- buro9 10y ago
  Security. We have policies on our laptops for encryption, anti-virus, etc. Those policies extend to which devices can even connect to the VPN. So to connect to the VPN, to interact with the company when we're travelling on business, or to be available for support calls after a product release... the only computer that works is the one that can connect to the VPN. Which means that the only computer that works is the one that is owned by the company, meets all policy requirements, has the VPN access, and we carry with us (except when we go to gigs, in such scenarios the offices have really big safes). For us, it's security. No computer is left out, they're with us or in a safe at any moment.
  - a012 10y ago
    Best security is to have an isolated environment in company office, and desktop fits in that case. I think you're talking about different position than developer.
    - buro9 10y ago
      This is for all our staff, from developers to the team lead, to the sales and marketing, to the support. There are no exceptions. The security policies are followed by all.
- zelos 10y ago
  Working from home, presenting in meetings, working in a different office, impromptu group coding sessions. I guess you could have desktop and a laptop, but that seems like overkill and you just know you'd forget to git push something from the desktop one day and be stuck.
- anthonybsd 10y ago
  > Is coding in cafes and visiting conferences that big a use case? Ugh no. Just having mobility around the office (to grab your laptop and walk over to someone to show them something) is a huge use case for me, not to mention conference rooms, kitchen area, etc.
- tajen 10y ago
  I publish a Saas product and I carry my laptop from my coworking to home every day. It's just that I also have my personal stuff on that computer.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Bringing your laptop to meetings, or being able to remote in from home (taking it with you) are pretty huge benefits to usability. Though I do prefer a real (manual switch) keyboard, the touchpad on the mbp is awesome, and would actually be okay with that over a mouse. Beyond that, the 16gb ram limitation is sometimes an irritation... All upgradability is locked out, which is sad. Prior to around 2011, I would always buy at the midrange and upgrade ram/hd a year in. I miss that option, but they want that extra $$$ from you.
acquacow 10y ago
Man, that looks like a website I made back in 2001...
- 3chelon 10y ago
  Yeah, who said skeuomorphism was dead? Oh yeah, Apple did...
- ff10 10y ago
  Cool, right?
- arm 10y ago
  That’s kind of inevitable, considering that the website is pretending it’s being displayed on a Newton MessagePad 2100, which was made back in 1997¹. ―――――― ¹ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad#Newton_device_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad#Newton_device_model...
CoolGuySteve 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the next Mac Pro is just an external graphics card providing a setup like the Razer Blade Stealth. Although it would be nice if there was a Mac with normal intel RAM and CPU sockets.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
My 95 year old Dad has a Mac Pro and loves it. He does a lot of 3D animation and general video work, and it meets his needs perfectly. I understand that the Mac Pro is a tiny market though. I also need a lot of compute resources for my work (deep learning and other machine learning to support NLP) but I use large servers on Azure, GCP, AWS, and OVH so a MacBook meets my needs. Even for my Dad's use case, it might be better to use cloud compute resources, but at 95 years old, he wants to stay with what he knows.
- djthorpe 10y ago
  Die-hard Mac Pro user here. I have one "ashtray" at home and one at work. Prefer wired ethernet, wired RAID storage and wired big monitors plus all the ports I need (albeit not super accessible with the new design). I can't imagine how I would do without my desktop computer, I suppose I would need to get an iMac or Mac Mini, but those also seem to be languishing in some small corner cupboard of Cupertino... I continue to be genuinely enamored with Final Cut Pro, Motion, Logic Pro, Aperture, AirPort Express, Time Capsule, Cinema Display, XServe and the spinny wheel iPod. Since we're not going back to this golden Apple era anytime soon, it's going to be harder and more stressful to work out how I might achieve the same level of comfort with my technology when it needs replaced. Having to replace my Mac Pro will be one of the harder decisions I have to make.
- themihai 10y ago
  So this means that after all there is still a niche for Mac Pro....
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    There is a niche. It's not a big niche, but it's a niche. And if the MacPro had been an updated cheesegrater instead of an ashtray, it would still be selling into its niche. There's a solid market for ancient but refurbed/updated cheesegrater Pros, and an even bigger market for screamer dual-Xeon monster PCs. Considering how few media power users like Windows, Apple should own the latter. It's a shame Apple has turned its back on those users. But I suppose the conclusion is right. Mac is now a dying brand, and Cook wants to kill it off within the next five years or so - very likely taking the soul of Apple with it.
PaulRobinson 10y ago
The 2013 Mac Pro was never viable for almost anybody, and today it's even less obvious what direction they're taking with it. It looked gorgeous, and many people thought they were _the_ machine to have, but once you prodded the specs a bit, it seemed over-priced, and they lack of upgrades has meant it's just now a really poor buy. Since they decided with the MBP lineup that touchbars were seemingly more "pro" than decent chipsets and more RAM, I've started looking more earnestly at getting out of the Apple ecosystem. I have been eyeing up the iPad Pro for a while, but struggle to make the jump because once I move out of Apple, everything will go: I'll move to an Android phone, an Android tablet, and a Linux laptop. I have already used Linux server-side (although am preferring to head towards Lambdas and "pure Go" Docker containers more and more), all the while, but in 2006 I moved to OS X for my main workstation because it was the best Unix box I could unpack from a box and just expect to work. And then there is the household ecosystem. If I move, I'll be buying my family non-Apple kit in future as well. In my small office alone more than a dozen developers are considering the same switch. That's $30k/year or more we spend collectively on Apple gear we're going to shift off from. In one, small office. Imagine how this scales. It's a mess. Maybe we're too small a market, maybe if every dev with Apple kit in the World switched away Apple would barely notice the shift, but they would within a few years. They courted Unix devs back in the early 2000s. They know if they could get the best professional developers onto Apple, they in turn would make great software, which would then make the product lineup competitive. It worked. As the exodus picks up pace, they'll only have a few years before they realise there are only a handful of developers prepared to keep a Mac around, and the collective innovation will move from OS X and iOS to Linux and Android. That could be an interesting shift for those of us who are comfortable in both, but I don't fancy going long on AAPL long-term. A really great Mac Pro that is best in class out of the box, some really amazing displays which Apple could make in ways that no other manufacturer has pockets to match (and the ability to use third party displays, please!), an MBP that at least holds it own, that can compete with the Dell XPS, it could add up to keeping people in the loop, and others too. The Mac Pro stagnation was the first sign that Apple had given up on their traditional market. The MBP was an underline and an exclamation mark.
- lookuptable2 10y ago
  Simply a difference in opinion here but I don't share any of your qualms with the MacBook Pro. I simply like macOS too much to change to anything else.
frusciante19 10y ago
Wow can you imagine the hand-wringing if they do come out with a Mac Pro next year? Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
overcast 10y ago
I've given up hope of a replacement for my 2008 Mac Pro. I'm really not sure what to do, once this thing inevitably seizes up. I've maxed the RAM, upgraded all four bays to SSD, replaced the video card three times. And now I'm hacking in the latest OS because it's no longer "supported". I'd really like to know what they plan on accomplishing, by sticking it to the people who are developing all the software for their flagship mobile devices.
- sporkenfang 10y ago
  You can still buy the older years' models. 2014 was a good year for Mac laptops.
  - tzs 10y ago
    He's talking about Mac Pro (desktop), not Macbook Pro (laptop).
- ianai 10y ago
  I really think they decided the desktop is dead. They're assuming developers are using MBPs.
  - hbosch 10y ago
    Apple has also catered heavily to the professional artist/creative field. Large scale movie editing, massive audio projects, and especially 3D animation or arch vis will definitely leave the Apple ecosystem if they kill the desktop-grade Mac. Workflows in these fields are often pegged to the latest hardware, and the GPU/CPUs in notebooks - not to mention storage, RAM, inputs - aren't often up to the task. Not to mention, these sorts of projects are rarely done "on-the-go" so portability isn't necessary. Things like visual design, print design, and UX are not very heavy tasks and could all be done without even a dGPU... but the entertainment industry, as far as I know it, has been Mac heavy in the past. Maybe I'm wrong though. Remote render farms are becoming more affordable, however.
    - 10y ago
barkingcat 10y ago
My prediction is that if there is going to be a next Mac Pro, it will have 12 ports: All USB-C/thunderbolt only in the usb-c form factor. No power plug (and thus self limiting the power draw to what usb-c can provide). The power button will be removed in favour of a touch strip.
al2o3cr 10y ago
"Apple has proven they are no longer interested in making a computer for the high-end professional" [citation needed] "Is updated I/O and the opportunity to buy a third-party 5K display enough to sell us on a future Mac Pro?" I dunno, is a tiny change in sheetmetal design and slight interior tweaks enough to sell people on [future model of some car]? Articles like this would be vastly improved if they updated their premise from "APPLE IZ ABANDONING PROOOOOOZZ" to "Apple isn't making the gear we're hoping for, here's our alternative pick and a summary of how it better meets our needs".
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  > "Apple has proven they are no longer interested in making a computer for the high-end professional" > [citation needed] No, not really. They've said and done nothing to support this market since the Mac Pro came out, therefore, it's reasonable to conclude they don't care about it. I think the premise is fine; if you like a company and you want them to produce a product you'll use, there's nothing wrong with saying so. It might be a futile effort, granted, but it's still legitimate.
  - IBM 10y ago
    Welcome to Apple post-Steve Jobs return. Apple smartly hasn't Osborne'd their products since then and the mood swings of some Apple fans is unlikely to change that. >They've said and done nothing to support this market since the Mac Pro came out, therefore, it's reasonable to conclude they don't care about it. Yes except for the fact that they continue to sell them. Apple hasn't also stated how long they'll continue to make and sell new iPhones for either.
    - ivraatiems 10y ago
      > Yes except for the fact that they continue to sell them. Apple hasn't also stated how long they'll continue to make and sell new iPhones for either. Not a fair comparison - iPhones are updated every year. "We don't mind selling you this" is not the same as "we are actively invested in this." They are clearly NOT supporting the market with the Mac Pro they have now; whether it is being actively sold or not isn't the point. It's like Google's many many halfway-dead apps: people use them, they're online, but no new development is happening.
draw_down 10y ago
They should be embarrassed by how they have treated this model. It's ridiculous.
stiGGG 10y ago
Just my 2 cents... At my last client they provided a computer for me, because they don't want foreign clients in their network. I got a MacPro with 32gb ram and lowest specs possible beside that. It was the first time i worked with the trash can and it blowed my mind from the first minutes. WTF is this 3 year old machine still fast. After this experience i understand why Apple seems to be so lazy here. I will not say _nobody_ needs more performance, but i think 90% of the self called pro users wouldn't notice a difference with an updated hardware. Under the consideration that the whole MacPro target is group is relatively small, it's completely understandable why this is not number one on Apple's priority list.
jdietrich 10y ago
A lot of pro audio users are doggedly sticking with the Mac Pro. Some of them don't want to lose billable hours by transitioning to Windows, others are locked in because of Logic Pro. Pretty much everyone I know uses a rackmount kit to turn the Mac Pro into something resembling a proper workstation, with a Thunderbolt RAID array next to it in the rack. It seems absurd to me that a "pro" computer costing as much as a decent used car needs third-party accessories to be usable as a professional tool. That cute little trash can turns into an 8u monster when it's properly specced out. The solution offered by Apple is to just daisy-chain everything off Thunderbolt, which is almost hilariously awful in practice. The supposed minimalism and elegance of the Mac Pro goes out of the window when there's a rat's nest of cabling hanging out of it. It turns out that PCIe slots and drive bays are a really neat way of expanding a computer. http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html

60 points by arm 10y ago

mhd 10y ago

I kinda get why "regular" users are ditching PCs for mobile platforms, but never quite got why developers are on the laptop bandwagon. Is coding in cafes and visiting conferences that big a use case? Or is this another symptom of a screwed work-life balance where using your work computer at home (i.e. in your "spare time") is that important?

oakesm9 10y ago
For me, it's a symptom of open plan offices. If you need to work together with someone it's too distracting to do it at your desk right next to everyone else, therefore, you need to go to a small meeting room. If you only had a desktop computer, you wouldn't be able to take your work with you.
- evan_ 10y ago
  yep, and it's pretty trivial to just plug in a monitor when I'm at my desk- everything else is wireless and Just Works™, so it's not like I'm giving up a whole lot for the convenience.
mzl 10y ago
For me it is about simplifying where I work. Most of the time I work at my desk in the office. Since I have a laptop as the main machine, I am not bound to that desk. I can move to a sofa, we can go to a conference room to discuss some code, I can work from home if I want to, and so on. Previously, I had both a laptop and a desktop, but there was always some extra effort to make sure everything was synced between the machines.
auggierose 10y ago
If you don't need the power of the desktop (which most developers don't, macbook pro 15inch is just fine), then why would you forgo the mobility of a laptop?
jmkni 10y ago
It is nice having all of your stuff on one computer. At my desk I use a dock to connect 3 high resolution monitors to my laptop via a single USB-C port, which works really well as a replacement for a desktop PC, then I can disconnect it, go to a coffee shop or a conference and continue working without even having to close my IDE. Now we are at the point where your laptop can confortably drive a couple of monitors when you want it to, but can also be portable and light with good battery life when you want it to, you don't need a desktop PC. Also, if you work in multiple places, you can have a couple of screens and a keyboard/mouse on your desk in each place, rock up with your laptop, and plug in.
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  Yea, in reverse i don't get the confusion/argument for desktops. In this day and age, i feel like the defense should be on the side of desktops. For a good portion of work a laptop can do everything a "desktop" can, including big monitors and additional keyboard/mouse. And it has the added benefit of taking it anywhere. It's a desktop when you want it, and a laptop when you want it. Sure, there are plenty of resource intensive applications that would be better suited for a desktop, but i highly value the mobility. And i work in a very strict 9-5, (nearly) no work is taken home past clock-out. Barring freak outages of course (i have yet to see one in my time here, \o/) edit: Fighting my comma demon.
  - lmm 10y ago
    > Sure, there are plenty of resource intensive applications that would be better suited for a desktop, but i highly value the mobility. Can you explain this part? What's the mobility getting you that's worth maybe halving your RAM (for example) for?
    - notheguyouthink 10y ago
      Well for me, development in cli. I do nothing that requires 16+Gig of ram. 8 is plenty for me (what i have in my macbook pro, iirc). Sure, ram is always nice, but i am able to do my work and take my laptop (which i also code for fun on) wherever i am. Hotels/couch/offices/etc. I'm not stuck to a single spot, in a single room, in a single building. It's a really, really important feature to me. Even just at my house i move around the house frequently.
jbob2000 10y ago
Sometimes I like to code on the couch. Also guilty of coding in the bathroom. And sometimes I code on the train into work. There is something tactile about a laptop that a desktop is missing. It's a thing I can carry around, it becomes an extension of my body in a way. This thing is mine. Whereas a desktop - that's my company's computer, or that's my home office computer - it's not mine. It's not a work-life balance thing, I just like carrying my tools around.
- douche 10y ago
  > Also guilty of coding in the bathroom I'm curious how that works, and what brings you to do that? Unless it's some sort of especially heinous open-office setup, and the only way to grab any sort of privacy and peace is to post up in one of the stalls.
  - jbob2000 10y ago
    Not the office bathroom, the home one. Mostly because I'm hot on the chase to get something to work and don't want mother nature to interfere, haha.
kris-s 10y ago
For work I prefer laptops simply because they are more flexible, I can bring it into a conference room, take it to a quiet corner if my semi-open office is noisy, etc. The CPU power of any recent MacBook Pro has been more than sufficient for web and iOS development. On personal side projects: I enjoy working in cafes & libraries.
bas_ta 10y ago
I currently use my laptop for both work and play and it's kind of convenient to not be tied to my desk :)
ssharp 10y ago
What do developers need a desktop for when laptops are both portable and can act as desktops when you plug them into a docking station? Is the ability to have an easily expanded computer that necessary? Even for a lot of "pro" use that is hardware intensive, like music production, is pretty well-facilitated on a laptop these days. I don't work with video, so maybe that's another story.
chrisbennet 10y ago
I'm a developer/consultant so I need to take my laptop to clients a few times a month. The rest of the time is sits closed on my desk, running a couple of big monitors. Data point: I have a MacBook Pro and my previous laptop was also a MBP. My next laptop wont be.
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  Have you picked one yet? I'm also in the same boat, but i'm unsure which i want atm.
  - chrisbennet 10y ago
    I'm leaning towards the "New Razor Blade". I wish it had a bigger screen though. My 2nd choice would be the Dell 5510. If it wasn't for the Dell's a weak GPU, it would be my first choice. BTW: I'm one of those weirdo Windows developers so I don't have the any Linux concerns. I don't use my laptop for games but I want a decent GPU for graphics now and machine learning in the future.
    - notheguyouthink 10y ago
      Ah hah, yea i'll be installing Linux. But quality hardware is quality hardware. Appreciate your feedback!
nilved 10y ago
Part of it is that I need to bring my work computer home since I am on-call for server issues. The other part is that I don't have a designated working space -- I work wherever I want to. I would get restless having only a desktop available.
stephenr 10y ago
For a number of years laptops have been "good enough" for most developer needs, and they provide much greater flexibility. Using my laptop and occasionally iPad, I've worked from at least 4 different homes, a casino, 3 short term rental houses, a couple of client offices, and a beach in Thailand over the last ~7 years.
- auvi 10y ago
  If you don't mind sharing the details, what was your internet setup in a beach in Thailand?
  - stephenr 10y ago
    4G enabled iPad mini + Panic's Prompt.app for iOS. It wasn't a regular thing, just resolving some access issues (on servers) for colleagues (at an all remote agency). Having said that, I've also used a Thai 4G sim to tether (and allow colleagues to tether) for data while in Melbourne and while in California.
  - 3chelon 10y ago
    If you don't mind sharing the details, what was your job on a beach in Thailand? ;)
3chelon 10y ago
Working on a desktop is just so limiting. I cannot imagine doing it in this day and age. I work at home, in cafes, on the train and yes, sometimes at the office too. At home and at the office I have a couple of big monitors to plug in and - hey presto - I have a fantastically large desktop. It's simply the best of all worlds. And the work/life balance is definitely not screwed if you spend half the week working from home, like I always aim to.
- arvinsim 10y ago
  > And the work/life balance is definitely not screwed if you spend half the week working from home, like I always aim to. Working at home is still work.
dhruvmittal 10y ago
So, my company issued development machine is a beefy desktop full of xeons and graphics cards (necessary for the specific work I do). It's fantastic for 95% of my work life but sometimes I want a computer in a meeting with me to take some detailed notes, have a document/code on hand, or give a presentation. Obviously, there are ways around all of those situations. I can email my slides to the presentation machines in the conference rooms, etc. But they don't really beat the convenience of just grabbing the computer I used to make the ppt and knowing that everything will work. Sometimes I get quite jealous of colleagues with laptops. And then, of course, there are the aforementioned cases of travel or wanting to work from home instead of coming in.
- thedaemon 10y ago
  You need a Surface Pro. It's a great tool for what you want.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Maybe it's just me, but almost every office I've visited in the past 8 years has been mostly laptop-driven for 99% of their staff. Do you mind telling what industry you work in, that you a) use a desktop and b) aren't afforded a laptop as well?
gutnor 10y ago
In addition to other responses: there is not much difference in practice between a desktop and a laptop in a large office environment. Sure developer gets nicer than average desktop, but generally something in line of what you can have on a laptop and they are generally stuck with that config until the next company refresh. So the choice becomes a desktop or a laptop with exactly the same configuration and the same effective extensibility. Why would you not take the laptop, which also allows you to work from home, carry at meetings, ... ?
PaulRobinson 10y ago
For me, the work machine is there for a web browser (through which I also do email), Slack, and a term for vim, tests and docker. I don't really need heavy compute in front of me - all that's done up in AWS, GCP, etc. I could in theory get away with a Chromebook with a really decent term: I'd ssh into a VPS and tmux in there, and do my workflow would be over there. I have a colleague who has this setup and he's able to successfully work on nothing more than an iPad Pro if he needs to, including with remote pairing with another developer, talking to each other via various voice call apps on his phone. It works surprisingly well. As to form factor, being able to take my code into meetings is frequently useful, being able to move desks to pair side by side with somebody in another part of the building, that is all useful. A powerful desktop would be interesting for me if I wanted to do more compute in front of me, and might even be cost effective if the right sort of kit was priced at the right level. For 3D animators/CAD types, I imagine it's essential.
- thedaemon 10y ago
  As a 3D animator, I can say I am still using desktops and have yet to be able to transfer to a laptop. I have tried a few times, but it's just not the same. As a laptop, the screens are too small, touchpads are useless, they become leg melting, the video cards options are lacking or pointless in a laptop. Maybe one day, but I still don't see it happening for me in the next 5-10 years.
rhinoceraptor 10y ago
I take my laptop home every day, it's come in handy several times when I had to work from home for various reasons. I never check it outside of work, though.
Tehnix 10y ago
>Is coding in cafes and visiting conferences that big a use case Is that really the only place you use your computer? I'm a consultant, working part time at an office, and I am doing a masters and generally just enjoy coding as a hobby. My use case is something like: I develop on my couch, I develop at home, I develop on the train, I develop in the dining room, I develop in my own room, I sometimes write some quick code while on the bus during my commute, and I write code at my university. I also bring this same computer to work and use it to develop there. Oh, and I also sometimes enjoy gaming with my friends at their place, with the same computer. Why on earth would I restrict myself to a stationary computer when I can have a portable one that I can take everywhere I want with no hassle? In my circles the only people that have a stationary computer are people that use it for gaming, and even then they still have a laptop on which they do everything else.
- falcolas 10y ago
  I personally can't imagine using my work-provided computer for anything other than work. Too much potential for my employer to claim my hobby projects, for viruses to compromise client IP, for otherwise perfectly legal activities done on company property to terminate your employment. The risk / reward ratio is just too high.
  - Zelmor 10y ago
    Virtualbox.
    - falcolas 10y ago
      Virtualbox doesn't solve the problem of performing non-work related tasks on a corporate computer. It would help resolve some of the concerns about sandboxing data, but only some.
      - Zelmor 10y ago
        It leaves no traces on the host, so your work is invisible. Just encrypt it and there you go.
macintux 10y ago
I work from home; more accurately, I work from wherever the hell I want. Spent two weeks camping alongside a river in Florida this spring, working mostly from my tent's equivalent to a screened-in porch. Yes, a laptop is vital.
falcolas 10y ago
I have a laptop, because that's what was issued to me. If I recall correctly, it's a lingering symptom of not having enough desk spaces in the company's early days, so people needed the flexibility to move around. I appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from just about anywhere (though the practical limitations of working through a VPN mean that it's not "just about anywhere"), but I also wish sometimes I wasn't able to do "just one more thing" from wherever I happen to be at the time. Really, I'd just prefer to have a desktop running Ubuntu, so I could match my production environment that I code for. But for some reason that's just not allowed.
buro9 10y ago
Security. We have policies on our laptops for encryption, anti-virus, etc. Those policies extend to which devices can even connect to the VPN. So to connect to the VPN, to interact with the company when we're travelling on business, or to be available for support calls after a product release... the only computer that works is the one that can connect to the VPN. Which means that the only computer that works is the one that is owned by the company, meets all policy requirements, has the VPN access, and we carry with us (except when we go to gigs, in such scenarios the offices have really big safes). For us, it's security. No computer is left out, they're with us or in a safe at any moment.
- a012 10y ago
  Best security is to have an isolated environment in company office, and desktop fits in that case. I think you're talking about different position than developer.
  - buro9 10y ago
    This is for all our staff, from developers to the team lead, to the sales and marketing, to the support. There are no exceptions. The security policies are followed by all.
zelos 10y ago
Working from home, presenting in meetings, working in a different office, impromptu group coding sessions. I guess you could have desktop and a laptop, but that seems like overkill and you just know you'd forget to git push something from the desktop one day and be stuck.
anthonybsd 10y ago
> Is coding in cafes and visiting conferences that big a use case? Ugh no. Just having mobility around the office (to grab your laptop and walk over to someone to show them something) is a huge use case for me, not to mention conference rooms, kitchen area, etc.
tajen 10y ago
I publish a Saas product and I carry my laptop from my coworking to home every day. It's just that I also have my personal stuff on that computer.
tracker1 10y ago
Bringing your laptop to meetings, or being able to remote in from home (taking it with you) are pretty huge benefits to usability. Though I do prefer a real (manual switch) keyboard, the touchpad on the mbp is awesome, and would actually be okay with that over a mouse. Beyond that, the 16gb ram limitation is sometimes an irritation... All upgradability is locked out, which is sad. Prior to around 2011, I would always buy at the midrange and upgrade ram/hd a year in. I miss that option, but they want that extra $$$ from you.

acquacow 10y ago

Man, that looks like a website I made back in 2001...

3chelon 10y ago
Yeah, who said skeuomorphism was dead? Oh yeah, Apple did...
ff10 10y ago
Cool, right?
arm 10y ago
That’s kind of inevitable, considering that the website is pretending it’s being displayed on a Newton MessagePad 2100, which was made back in 1997¹. ―――――― ¹ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad#Newton_device_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad#Newton_device_model...

CoolGuySteve 10y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the next Mac Pro is just an external graphics card providing a setup like the Razer Blade Stealth. Although it would be nice if there was a Mac with normal intel RAM and CPU sockets.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

My 95 year old Dad has a Mac Pro and loves it. He does a lot of 3D animation and general video work, and it meets his needs perfectly. I understand that the Mac Pro is a tiny market though. I also need a lot of compute resources for my work (deep learning and other machine learning to support NLP) but I use large servers on Azure, GCP, AWS, and OVH so a MacBook meets my needs. Even for my Dad's use case, it might be better to use cloud compute resources, but at 95 years old, he wants to stay with what he knows.

djthorpe 10y ago
Die-hard Mac Pro user here. I have one "ashtray" at home and one at work. Prefer wired ethernet, wired RAID storage and wired big monitors plus all the ports I need (albeit not super accessible with the new design). I can't imagine how I would do without my desktop computer, I suppose I would need to get an iMac or Mac Mini, but those also seem to be languishing in some small corner cupboard of Cupertino... I continue to be genuinely enamored with Final Cut Pro, Motion, Logic Pro, Aperture, AirPort Express, Time Capsule, Cinema Display, XServe and the spinny wheel iPod. Since we're not going back to this golden Apple era anytime soon, it's going to be harder and more stressful to work out how I might achieve the same level of comfort with my technology when it needs replaced. Having to replace my Mac Pro will be one of the harder decisions I have to make.
themihai 10y ago
So this means that after all there is still a niche for Mac Pro....
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  There is a niche. It's not a big niche, but it's a niche. And if the MacPro had been an updated cheesegrater instead of an ashtray, it would still be selling into its niche. There's a solid market for ancient but refurbed/updated cheesegrater Pros, and an even bigger market for screamer dual-Xeon monster PCs. Considering how few media power users like Windows, Apple should own the latter. It's a shame Apple has turned its back on those users. But I suppose the conclusion is right. Mac is now a dying brand, and Cook wants to kill it off within the next five years or so - very likely taking the soul of Apple with it.

PaulRobinson 10y ago

The 2013 Mac Pro was never viable for almost anybody, and today it's even less obvious what direction they're taking with it. It looked gorgeous, and many people thought they were _the_ machine to have, but once you prodded the specs a bit, it seemed over-priced, and they lack of upgrades has meant it's just now a really poor buy. Since they decided with the MBP lineup that touchbars were seemingly more "pro" than decent chipsets and more RAM, I've started looking more earnestly at getting out of the Apple ecosystem. I have been eyeing up the iPad Pro for a while, but struggle to make the jump because once I move out of Apple, everything will go: I'll move to an Android phone, an Android tablet, and a Linux laptop. I have already used Linux server-side (although am preferring to head towards Lambdas and "pure Go" Docker containers more and more), all the while, but in 2006 I moved to OS X for my main workstation because it was the best Unix box I could unpack from a box and just expect to work. And then there is the household ecosystem. If I move, I'll be buying my family non-Apple kit in future as well. In my small office alone more than a dozen developers are considering the same switch. That's $30k/year or more we spend collectively on Apple gear we're going to shift off from. In one, small office. Imagine how this scales. It's a mess. Maybe we're too small a market, maybe if every dev with Apple kit in the World switched away Apple would barely notice the shift, but they would within a few years. They courted Unix devs back in the early 2000s. They know if they could get the best professional developers onto Apple, they in turn would make great software, which would then make the product lineup competitive. It worked. As the exodus picks up pace, they'll only have a few years before they realise there are only a handful of developers prepared to keep a Mac around, and the collective innovation will move from OS X and iOS to Linux and Android. That could be an interesting shift for those of us who are comfortable in both, but I don't fancy going long on AAPL long-term. A really great Mac Pro that is best in class out of the box, some really amazing displays which Apple could make in ways that no other manufacturer has pockets to match (and the ability to use third party displays, please!), an MBP that at least holds it own, that can compete with the Dell XPS, it could add up to keeping people in the loop, and others too. The Mac Pro stagnation was the first sign that Apple had given up on their traditional market. The MBP was an underline and an exclamation mark.

lookuptable2 10y ago
Simply a difference in opinion here but I don't share any of your qualms with the MacBook Pro. I simply like macOS too much to change to anything else.

frusciante19 10y ago

Wow can you imagine the hand-wringing if they do come out with a Mac Pro next year? Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

overcast 10y ago

I've given up hope of a replacement for my 2008 Mac Pro. I'm really not sure what to do, once this thing inevitably seizes up. I've maxed the RAM, upgraded all four bays to SSD, replaced the video card three times. And now I'm hacking in the latest OS because it's no longer "supported". I'd really like to know what they plan on accomplishing, by sticking it to the people who are developing all the software for their flagship mobile devices.

sporkenfang 10y ago
You can still buy the older years' models. 2014 was a good year for Mac laptops.
- tzs 10y ago
  He's talking about Mac Pro (desktop), not Macbook Pro (laptop).
ianai 10y ago
I really think they decided the desktop is dead. They're assuming developers are using MBPs.
- hbosch 10y ago
  Apple has also catered heavily to the professional artist/creative field. Large scale movie editing, massive audio projects, and especially 3D animation or arch vis will definitely leave the Apple ecosystem if they kill the desktop-grade Mac. Workflows in these fields are often pegged to the latest hardware, and the GPU/CPUs in notebooks - not to mention storage, RAM, inputs - aren't often up to the task. Not to mention, these sorts of projects are rarely done "on-the-go" so portability isn't necessary. Things like visual design, print design, and UX are not very heavy tasks and could all be done without even a dGPU... but the entertainment industry, as far as I know it, has been Mac heavy in the past. Maybe I'm wrong though. Remote render farms are becoming more affordable, however.
  - 10y ago

barkingcat 10y ago

My prediction is that if there is going to be a next Mac Pro, it will have 12 ports: All USB-C/thunderbolt only in the usb-c form factor. No power plug (and thus self limiting the power draw to what usb-c can provide). The power button will be removed in favour of a touch strip.

al2o3cr 10y ago

"Apple has proven they are no longer interested in making a computer for the high-end professional" [citation needed] "Is updated I/O and the opportunity to buy a third-party 5K display enough to sell us on a future Mac Pro?" I dunno, is a tiny change in sheetmetal design and slight interior tweaks enough to sell people on [future model of some car]? Articles like this would be vastly improved if they updated their premise from "APPLE IZ ABANDONING PROOOOOOZZ" to "Apple isn't making the gear we're hoping for, here's our alternative pick and a summary of how it better meets our needs".

ivraatiems 10y ago
> "Apple has proven they are no longer interested in making a computer for the high-end professional" > [citation needed] No, not really. They've said and done nothing to support this market since the Mac Pro came out, therefore, it's reasonable to conclude they don't care about it. I think the premise is fine; if you like a company and you want them to produce a product you'll use, there's nothing wrong with saying so. It might be a futile effort, granted, but it's still legitimate.
- IBM 10y ago
  Welcome to Apple post-Steve Jobs return. Apple smartly hasn't Osborne'd their products since then and the mood swings of some Apple fans is unlikely to change that. >They've said and done nothing to support this market since the Mac Pro came out, therefore, it's reasonable to conclude they don't care about it. Yes except for the fact that they continue to sell them. Apple hasn't also stated how long they'll continue to make and sell new iPhones for either.
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    > Yes except for the fact that they continue to sell them. Apple hasn't also stated how long they'll continue to make and sell new iPhones for either. Not a fair comparison - iPhones are updated every year. "We don't mind selling you this" is not the same as "we are actively invested in this." They are clearly NOT supporting the market with the Mac Pro they have now; whether it is being actively sold or not isn't the point. It's like Google's many many halfway-dead apps: people use them, they're online, but no new development is happening.

draw_down 10y ago

They should be embarrassed by how they have treated this model. It's ridiculous.

stiGGG 10y ago

Just my 2 cents... At my last client they provided a computer for me, because they don't want foreign clients in their network. I got a MacPro with 32gb ram and lowest specs possible beside that. It was the first time i worked with the trash can and it blowed my mind from the first minutes. WTF is this 3 year old machine still fast. After this experience i understand why Apple seems to be so lazy here. I will not say _nobody_ needs more performance, but i think 90% of the self called pro users wouldn't notice a difference with an updated hardware. Under the consideration that the whole MacPro target is group is relatively small, it's completely understandable why this is not number one on Apple's priority list.

jdietrich 10y ago

A lot of pro audio users are doggedly sticking with the Mac Pro. Some of them don't want to lose billable hours by transitioning to Windows, others are locked in because of Logic Pro. Pretty much everyone I know uses a rackmount kit to turn the Mac Pro into something resembling a proper workstation, with a Thunderbolt RAID array next to it in the rack. It seems absurd to me that a "pro" computer costing as much as a decent used car needs third-party accessories to be usable as a professional tool. That cute little trash can turns into an 8u monster when it's properly specced out. The solution offered by Apple is to just daisy-chain everything off Thunderbolt, which is almost hilariously awful in practice. The supposed minimalism and elegance of the Mac Pro goes out of the window when there's a rat's nest of cabling hanging out of it. It turns out that PCIe slots and drive bays are a really neat way of expanding a computer. http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html