This has nothing to do with the focus on laptops and everything to do with the simple fact that the new Nvidia cards are not supported, and there doesn't seem to be any indication from either Nvidia or Apple that they are committed to providing that support.
It's a strange problem, because there is plenty of demand for it, and I think we all appreciate the outsized role that GPUs play these days; to not offer support for 50-80% of the GPU market seems like a rather poor strategic decision. Particularly since you're really only talking about a team of 30 or 50 within Apple to help Nvidia, the drawbacks are minimal.
This has been an ongoing problem since the summer. Some have reverted back to using several 9xx cards (which have spiked in price) while others have switched platforms. Lacking any real progress on this, I would suspect many in this situation would abandon OSX permanently by the end of the year. And if you give up OSX on your desktop, the incentive to stay in that environment on your laptop, tablet, and phone go way down.
This is a serious problem and the only outcomes are either a) Nvidia GPUs are supported, or b) OSX is abandoned, because the simple fact is that Nvidia GPUs are more important long-term than the entire sum of Apple's hardware; I can replace a tablet or desktop or laptop, but I can't replace a Pascal TITAN X.
It's a strange problem, because there is plenty of demand for it, and I think we all appreciate the outsized role that GPUs play these days; to not offer support for 50-80% of the GPU market seems like a rather poor strategic decision. Particularly since you're really only talking about a team of 30 or 50 within Apple to help Nvidia, the drawbacks are minimal.
This has been an ongoing problem since the summer. Some have reverted back to using several 9xx cards (which have spiked in price) while others have switched platforms. Lacking any real progress on this, I would suspect many in this situation would abandon OSX permanently by the end of the year. And if you give up OSX on your desktop, the incentive to stay in that environment on your laptop, tablet, and phone go way down.
This is a serious problem and the only outcomes are either a) Nvidia GPUs are supported, or b) OSX is abandoned, because the simple fact is that Nvidia GPUs are more important long-term than the entire sum of Apple's hardware; I can replace a tablet or desktop or laptop, but I can't replace a Pascal TITAN X.