7 ms·

This is an incredibly weird thing... Inviting a bunch of bloggers into a room and saying that they're sorry, but they have great stuff down the line? It feels

• strombourg 10y ago
  Very. I think it speaks to the fear they have over losing this market and the incredibly bad reaction they'd have if they'd simply released the weakly updated Pro without further explanation.
  • ntsplnkv2 10y ago
    Good thing they're opening a dialogue, though. For Apple, that normally is "you're holding the phone wrong."
• ealexhudson 10y ago
  Perhaps they're realising that they're potentially losing a lot of people, and are a way aways from shipping. Much better to announce some vaporware and encourage people to stick around, especially if they plan to deliver. Before now, people had little hope about either Pros or Macbooks.
  • TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
    They wasted an entire hardware iteration on the Touch Bar that hardly anyone cares about. That's what put them in this position. If anything is un-Apple about it, it's that they so badly understood the desires of their customers.
    • mtgx 10y ago
      In my opinion, Apple started losing its way when it started caring more about "fashion", which is not necessarily the same as (and it's often the opposite of) good design.
      • Retric 10y ago
        The hardware has mostly stalled out. A great CPU from 3 years ago is still more powerful than what most people are buying today. RAM and SSD space is plentiful enough to be a non issue for most people. Battery progress is steady but very slow. So, what's left to base a new laptop on GPU?
        • netzone 10y ago
          They could go the desktop CPU route, although that's likely not an option for Apple since that would require them to either use extreme throttling or beef up the cooling (meaning louder fans and probably a thicker case)
        • martinald 10y ago
          Storage? Nearly everyone I know who has a MBP is 100% on it all the time on disk. Understand apple makes a load on the SSD upgrades, but seriously increasing base storage would be enough for a bit.
          • Retric 10y ago
            Is 1TB not large enough, or is it a cost issue? Sure, they IMO should increase the minimum past 128, but many people don't use close to that and the 1,300$ price point is attractive w/ 2.7GHz i5.
      • acdha 10y ago
        I don't think they had an issue with design so much as only having a single team as bottleneck for the entire product lineup. They really need the equivalent of Intel's tick-tock strategy where the designers can be going full speed on the cool new manufacturing techniques but a second team is just taking last year's industrial designs and shipping updates with current spec / capacity components so they stop drifting so far behind the market every time the design team isn't ready to ship a major change.
    • H1Supreme 10y ago
      Truth. I had $1,500 earmarked for a new macbook pro before they launched. Switched to Linux for all my development work shortly after. Which, I should have done earlier tbh.
      • JoelTheSuperior 10y ago
        To be honest I feel like the touchbar MBP gets a bit of undeserved hate. I do think the touchbar is a total gimmick admittedly but what else did people really want? More RAM, sure, but that'd mean lower battery life. I was admittedly disappointed at first but then realised there isn't really anything else that they could've done to interest me anyway. I'm genuinely very happy with my existing 2014 MacBook Pro. I just also think it's telling that I as someone who's spent far too much money on Apple hardware also uses a hackintosh desktop.
      • robotjosh 10y ago
        I was ready to pay 6k+ for a max MacBook pro with external gpu and whatever other usb-c accessories they were going to sell. The lack of a ram upgrade caught me off guard, really no ram upgrade in like 6 years? Really its usb-c-only and they have no usb-c accessories? SMH
        • TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
          I've been reading up on various eGPU enclosures. I'll probably do it the next time I get some side-gig money, but the hacky-ness of it makes me nervous. If Apple were to make an official one, it'd be a day-1 purchase for me. I could see this type of product possibly fitting into a new Mac Pro hardware line, but I'm probably just dreaming.
    • simonh 10y ago
      Releasing the TouchBar laptops last November, which apparently have seen a 20% yoy sales increase, screwed up their Mac Pro desktop line released 3 years ago. I don't even...
• cooper12 10y ago
  I think Gruber addresses this pretty well: they already took the silent approach, but it was becoming unsustainable with their pro market, whose needs were not being met. If they just did a small hardware bump, they'd be projecting that they'd given up on the pro and they'd lose a lot of loyalty and goodwill. People can only wait so long so this info helps to keep them interested and bring the term "Apple" back into the vocabulary of any pro considering a future purchase.
  • TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    Missing the point though. It's not just the hardware, it's the trust. A lot of pros will be thinking "So why should I buy New MacPro if they're only going to let the line stagnate again?"
    • TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
      Apple said entire point of the redesign is to make the machine modular, so that it can be upgraded down the line, specifically addressing this concern. I guess it's up to each person to determine for themselves whether to believe it.
      • dexterdog 10y ago
        Modular so you can upgrade it only with Apple parts?
        • michaelbuckbee 10y ago
          Well, if it was like the old pros, modular like: RAM, HD and Graphics cards could be upgraded.
          • emptythought 10y ago
            CPUs as well
        • 10y ago
• dom0 10y ago
  They'll be announcing any time now that their next high end Macs will hit 3 Ghz eh... 5 GHz... in a matter of months.
• jaimebuelta 10y ago
  Adding to my comment, I find very strange that they announced almost nothing tangible (the bump in the specs of the Mac Pro is not available yet in their web site, though I imagine it will be soon)
• tptacek 10y ago
  Just like the Mac Pro product line.
• bangonkeyboard 10y ago
  Continual promises about greatness in the future to allay misgivings about the present feel very much Tim Cook's Apple.
  • simonh 10y ago
    Oh come on. Apple has been making huge and increasing profits while teetering on the brink of failure for the last 15 years.
• MikusR 10y ago
  Not bloggers. Religious fanatics.
  • josefresco 10y ago
    Not sure why this was downvoted as it's completely accurate. Apple invited a well-known, Apple fanboy to an exclusive meeting with high level execs (feeling special yet?) to break this news - pretty much the best case scenario to break disappointing news.
    • Avenger42 10y ago
      He wasn't the only one invited, as he pointed out. However, he's one of the go-to sources for Apple punditry, so Apple knew that as soon as the announcement was made, tech people would be visiting his site to find out what he thought, and they'd be smart to give him a head start at digesting the news and asking them questions directly, instead of rhetorically.
    • valuearb 10y ago
      "Religious fanatics" is a dumb phrase. Gruber has and can be very critical of apple and everyone. OP was just unhappy that Gruber doesn't share the same opinions as they do.
      • MikusR 10y ago
        Fanatic does not mean no criticism.
• jads 10y ago
  They likely didn't have a choice, especially as they released a speed bump today. The Mac Pro had become a bit of a joke but the iMac and MBP range was powerful enough (just enough) that the pro community would grumble more than complain. After the critical reception of the new MacBook Pro range amongst the Apple community, especially pro users, everyone was questioning Apple's commitment to pro users, and the Mac as a whole. I'm glad to see Apple doing this, but I can't help thinking this was totally reactive and pre-emptive damage control. If Apple had just released the Mac Pro speed bump, there would be even more of an outcry that Apple has given up on anything more than incremental changes. The pessimist in me thinks that Apple simply had no idea that there was this sort of demand for pro Macs. Phil and Craig mentioned the iMac numerous times, as though to say "hey pros, there is a great Mac you can use", so they can still claim that they do make great, high-performance pro devices. My guess is "next year" means "Holidays 2018", and my guess is that Apple has only recently started work on this. Apple hasn't been about modular design or expandability for a long time. With the rise in adoption of VR, there has been even more discussion about upgrading graphics cards (remember Oculus comments about the Mac?), and the age of the CPUs is another criticism. I just can't imagine Apple starting work on this some time ago.
  • simonh 10y ago
    Most likely the current gen speed bump and next gen redesign were both green-lit at the same time, so however long ago they started on the current update.
    • JoelTheSuperior 10y ago
      Well all the current update is is them dropping the price of configurations they already owned and killing off the previous base model. It's very much a matter of flicking a switch.
  • JoelTheSuperior 10y ago
    To be honest the age of the CPUs isn't too bad. I mean, they're old but the CPUs they have are still perfectly acceptable and competitive. The issue is that the GPUs just aren't worth bothering with at all compared to what's out now. They talk in the article about being backed into a thermal corner and that's easy to believe. They simply didn't know that GPU technology was going to accelerate in advances in the way it did, and particularly not in single-GPU workloads.
• kmfrk 10y ago
  Companies and industries make purchasing decisions that lock them in for several years, so Apple probably finally got their head out of their ass as they could see people heading in another direction. Once you've spent five years transitioning to, say, a Windows setup, there's a significant additional cost to going with Apple, and it's not like Apple has felt like a deluxe experience lately.
  • JoelTheSuperior 10y ago
    This is the thing. A lot of companies have started switching away from Mac and now they're switching away I can't see that this is going to be enough to ever tempt them back unless they do something really amazing. I genuinely love macOS and I'm happy with Apple's offerings on the whole, but I think there's plenty of people who just don't care and are happy with whatever works. If you're using say, Pro Tools or Avid Media Composer or whatever software you use to produce content, odds are it works just fine on Windows too. I think many are going to try Windows, realise this and then simply not bother switching back.
• frogpelt 10y ago
  It is incredibly un-Apple. But its like when you're on the freeway and see billboard for your favorite restaurant 40 miles away. It gives you the motivation to not settle for something else. It might work.
• eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
  Definitely an odd showing of desperation from Apple. But it's a good sign and maybe they realize they were about to screw something big up.
• eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
  Definitely an odd showing of desperation from Apple. But it's a good sign and maybe they realize they were about to screw something big up.
• xgbi 10y ago
  Why even bother with the speed bump. These guys have been neglecting the mac pro for 4 years and work their ass on a new version, and still spend time updating the legacy ?