
Apple admits the Mac Pro was a mess - miles
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15175994/apple-mac-pro-failure-admission
======
barryp
I hope somebody at Apple can get it through their heads that a Mac Pro desktop
doesn't need to be the thinnest, lightest box full of the most exotic parts
with corners engineered to within fractions of a millimeter. It just needs to:

1\. Run macOS

2\. be fast as hell

3\. be quiet

4\. be reasonably priced

5\. be somewhat expandable on the inside with RAM and disks

6\. have a variety of external ports

7\. be spec-bumped at least once a year.

Do that and you'll sell units, and more importantly keep devs and creative
types happy

~~~
ux-app
Just bite the bullet and hackintosh. It's ridiculously easy. I put one
together in an afternoon with parts I had lying around. It even had GPU
acceleration for all those silly UI animations to run smoothly. There are
lists of hardware that are guaranteed to work. I'm not a Mac guy so I scrapped
the system, but as a bored weekend project it was fun.

I had no issues installing updates, networking was fine etc.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
I tried this a year or so ago, my only stumbling block was getting
iMessage/iCloud working properly, which was very difficult, has that improved?

~~~
exidy
It's improved in that the causes of failure are now better understood. Getting
it working means generating some UUIDs and things. e.g.
[https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/an-idiots-guide-to-
imessa...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/an-idiots-guide-to-
imessage.196827/)

------
djs070
The linked Daring Fireball article[1] is a lot more interesting and
informative

[1]
[http://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives](http://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives)

~~~
jakelazaroff
Also, nothing in the Daring Fireball article (the author of which was actually
present at the meeting with Apple) supports anything nearly as juicy as "Apple
admits the Mac Pro was a mess".

~~~
amaks
Not surprising given the reputation of Daring Fireball to be an Apple fan boy.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Or The Verge is just trying to grab attention with a sensationalist clickbait
headline?

------
tracker1
I'm not entirely sure why Apple doesn't just use ITX or mATX motherboard
layouts for its pro line, and bring back a "Mac" regular line.

Yes, potentially someone could by an "Apple" genuine repair motherboard and
DIY their own, but that would make a lot of people happier.... then also make
best of breed cases, that can only be had with a full Mac or Mac Pro. Yeah, it
would potentially cut into their margins on mac hardware for pros.. but they
aren't making much money there... the best bet is to keep the pros making
content for their mobile devices happy.

Edit: Also, even if they charged a $300 "core" fee that's refunded when you
turn in your old motherboard (assuming boards are sold for replacement), that
would cover the "OS License" costs for those that are doing it on their own.
Apple still makes money, but keeps the third parties to a minimum.

~~~
rangibaby
Bring back the cheese grater!

~~~
justinator
That's really not a bad idea. The Macbook I'm using now looks pretty similar
to the Macbook I was using when those towers were still in production - even
the G5 version.

I'm sure people are making FrakenMacs using this enclosure using old, broken
Ebay'd enclosures and cheap off the shelf parts that creme the official Mac.

~~~
dragonshed
> I'm sure people are making FrakenMacs using this enclosure using old, broken
> Ebay'd enclosures and cheap off the shelf parts that creme the official Mac.

Yup. I was eyeballing these [1] for exactly that purpose...

[1] [https://www.thelaserhive.com/product-
category/g5conv/](https://www.thelaserhive.com/product-category/g5conv/)

------
mixmastamyk
Second article and I still don't understand why they can't at least do a spec
bump every year. If not possible due to suppliers a price drop should at least
grab some market share. With the resources Apple has, anything else is simple
negligence.

~~~
cycomachead
Engineers, and especially the hardware kind, are a limited resource. Not that
Apple couldn't spend even more than they currently are on growth, but they're
reaching some limits, and until later this year office space is/will be one of
them.

This is combined with the fact that the Mac Pro sells in the "low single
digit" percentage range of Mac sales means that it's hard to justify an
outsized expense. When factoring in R&D costs, my guess is the Mac Pro has
much lower margins than other Macs.

~~~
mixmastamyk
That kind of "accountant" style thinking has brought them to the brink with
developers and media pros.

Killing off the development platform for your successful products is
incredibly shortsighted.

------
webwielder2
Three related but not dependent things keep getting conflated:

1\. The trash can design was not able to accommodate much heat variance and so
was not updatable.

2\. The trash can Mac Pro didn't suit some pro needs because of lack of
graphics card and internal storage upgradability.

3\. Dual graphics cards with an emphasis on OpenCL was the wrong direction to
go in.

~~~
valuearb
I think they got in a paralyzed state waiting for the right set of new GPUs
and CPUs they could update it with, and took far too long before they could
admit the design was too inflexible.

------
terminado
It's just that it's not worth $4,000 or even $3,000.

The trashcan is cool, despite looking like a trashcan, but way too expensive
for what you get.

Something at that price needs to last, and permit upgrades.

For what you get, and what you can do with it, it's not worth more than
$1,000.

Many Apple fans buy for status though, and Apple knows this, hence the watch.
So, simply having the price tag as an ornament works for some people.

~~~
valuearb
When it was released, the GPUs in the trash can cost more than its cheapest
version.

The Apple watch is best smart watch ever made. Far better to spend $400 on a
useful watch than $200 on a useless one.

~~~
jmanderley
Problem: That GPU wasn't particularly desirable even back in 2013. Just
because you can put in a needlessly expensive "workstation class" GPU doesn't
mean it's worth it.

------
m0llusk
Now when will "The Verge" admit this is clickbait?

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Yeroc
I just wish they'd admit the same for the latest Macbook Pro where they appear
to be optimizing for things that pros don't care about and removing things
they do care about!

~~~
valuearb
The new Macbook Pro has record sales, so no.

~~~
chrisbennet
You're right in that they won't admit they made a mistake because; in the
short term, their decision made more money.

"Higher sales" is orthogonal to what software development professionals want.

They discontinued the Pro version and put the "Pro" name on a "consumer"
version as far a software developers are concerned I think.

------
jostmey
Apple's entire desktop environment and lineup is a mess. I'm using windows 10
and couldn't be happier.

I feel like I've played ping-pong over the years, bouncing back and forth
between windows and apple. XP was okay, windows 7 was terrible. MacOS was
amazing at the time, but whatever MacOS I have right now keeps crashing. Now
I'm back to microsoft with windows 10

------
tempodox
I think the article sums it up really well. And I doubt we'll ever see
something as extensible as the cheese grater models again. Apple has convinced
me by now they dont't want to make anything but throwaway appliances with
fashion appeal.

------
frik
I don't get why we see so much negative about Apple here on HN. Yes, they made
some wrong decisions. But the OS (macOS) is still the same, and most pro use
an iMac nowadays. On the otherside it looks grim if you eant to continue the
PC pro path as Windows 10 just sends way to many data. I cannot imagine it's
okay for anyone that locale docx, pdf and jpg files are sent to
Redmond/Washington when Windows thinks it's about time (if a application
crashes, gets unresponses or slow downs). Or I cannot imagine it's okay for
anyone that Windows 10 sends a list of all music and video played, as well as
the browser history and the speech-recognition text-results in plain text to
Redmond. (You don't believe, well read their recently released
documentation!!) Every other company would face a outcry and be called adware
and spyware. Yet Windows 10 gets away? Why? Mac is still way better.

