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And yet that product is absolutely critical for them to keep selling their iPhones, iWatches, and iEverythings. They might not make a single dollar on the sale

by toufka 9y ago

And yet that product is absolutely critical for them to keep selling their iPhones, iWatches, and iEverythings. They might not make a single dollar on the sale of the pro machines - and it would still be worth every dollar of engineering put into the project to keep the devs happy in order to keep their other markets healthy.

ryanwaggoner 9y ago
There's zero evidence that this is true. Apple is aggregating an incredible amount of consumer demand on iOS, so developers will jump through a ton of hoops to serve that market. Is there any evidence that iOS doesn't have as many great apps because developers are fleeing because there's not a Mac Pro that they like?
- toufka 9y ago
  I'd be curious - from an academic/economist-like perspective - if that is a curve you can't see in data until it's broken. People stay and try and tough it out, then once they reach their tipping point they rage-quit and you never get them back. I kind of suspect that's what happened last year - everyone was just toughing it out waiting for the pro kits, and when it never came the threats that came in from big shops were very real. Enough so that Apple broke every tradition it had regarding future product announcements, and laid a lot of their goodwill on the line to promise a fix.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    If you're talking about the video, audio, photo, 3D, etc. markets, then maybe, though I'm really skeptical. I think sales of the Mac Pro have probably been sliding for awhile and Apple is turning their attention to it. I doubt there's some cataclysmic cliff or that it can't be turned around. Regardless, this doesn't have much to do with the macOS / iOS dev market, which is what I was responding to. No chance that there are a bunch of big dev shops that got fed up with not having the Pro desktop / laptop hardware from Apple that they want and decided they'd rather just abandon the Apple customer base rather than deal with it. The value of that customer base is huge, and those dev shops will go through a lot to reach it. "Our business has always been building apps for iOS and Android, but we don't like that we can't expand the memory in the iMac Pro, so we're just building Android apps from now on, even though more than half of our clients and customers are on iOS." No way.
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      > I doubt there's some cataclysmic cliff or that it can't be turned around. For any shop with a dozen mac pros running some mac software package it's a huge step to switch to PC if it also means switching the whole software stack. At this point there are probably a whole lot of shops that struggle with very old pros, or have started buying the iMac pro. But I'm sure there are shops that also held on for a long time and finally gave up and swapped both hardware and software because they grew tired of waiting (I know of a couple - but anecdata isn't data, so these are guesses). The only reason Apple broke tradition and disclosed that a new pro is coming is to convince shops like these to hang in there for another year.

by toufka 9y ago

ryanwaggoner 9y ago

There's zero evidence that this is true. Apple is aggregating an incredible amount of consumer demand on iOS, so developers will jump through a ton of hoops to serve that market. Is there any evidence that iOS doesn't have as many great apps because developers are fleeing because there's not a Mac Pro that they like?

toufka 9y ago
I'd be curious - from an academic/economist-like perspective - if that is a curve you can't see in data until it's broken. People stay and try and tough it out, then once they reach their tipping point they rage-quit and you never get them back. I kind of suspect that's what happened last year - everyone was just toughing it out waiting for the pro kits, and when it never came the threats that came in from big shops were very real. Enough so that Apple broke every tradition it had regarding future product announcements, and laid a lot of their goodwill on the line to promise a fix.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  If you're talking about the video, audio, photo, 3D, etc. markets, then maybe, though I'm really skeptical. I think sales of the Mac Pro have probably been sliding for awhile and Apple is turning their attention to it. I doubt there's some cataclysmic cliff or that it can't be turned around. Regardless, this doesn't have much to do with the macOS / iOS dev market, which is what I was responding to. No chance that there are a bunch of big dev shops that got fed up with not having the Pro desktop / laptop hardware from Apple that they want and decided they'd rather just abandon the Apple customer base rather than deal with it. The value of that customer base is huge, and those dev shops will go through a lot to reach it. "Our business has always been building apps for iOS and Android, but we don't like that we can't expand the memory in the iMac Pro, so we're just building Android apps from now on, even though more than half of our clients and customers are on iOS." No way.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    > I doubt there's some cataclysmic cliff or that it can't be turned around. For any shop with a dozen mac pros running some mac software package it's a huge step to switch to PC if it also means switching the whole software stack. At this point there are probably a whole lot of shops that struggle with very old pros, or have started buying the iMac pro. But I'm sure there are shops that also held on for a long time and finally gave up and swapped both hardware and software because they grew tired of waiting (I know of a couple - but anecdata isn't data, so these are guesses). The only reason Apple broke tradition and disclosed that a new pro is coming is to convince shops like these to hang in there for another year.