Apple called "Pro Users" bluff. The "pro user" that used to be served by the old Mac Pro was the same dope who gets the M-Sport BMW 3 Series, or the DSLR with the Kit Lens, etc. It's the rich dad "I want the best of X, but not the actual professional product, because I don't need it."
Other examples include Arc'Teryx clothing that is worn by VC's in Silicon Valley for wealth projection that will never see the austere environments that the clothing was designed for.
Apple made a true pro machine, and now the pro-poseurs are pissed.
BTW I am a pro-poseur, concerned with pro-image vs actual pro features. I desperately want an Apple monitor with speakers that docks to my MBP for around $1799.
>Apple made a true pro machine, and now the pro-poseurs are pissed.
Well, there are also tons of people working professionally with video, audio, etc, that don't have the money to fork for a $6K starting price machine, but would like to work on a fast, extensible, desktop machine and a good external monitor by Apple.
The iMac comes with lackluster extensibility and a monitor that can't work as an external display 4-6 years later when you upgrade machines. The Mac Mini is a mini-PC with even less extensibility.
Those people are still very much professionals. In that, they have clients, make a living from working on their computers, and could very much use faster e.g. rendering time, or the ability to run more VST plugins, or more complex 3D scenes, etc, to make their work easier.
They are very pro, and very many. They just aren't high-end Hollywood studios, or the art department of Nike level pro.
And they still could very much use something more pro than an iMac/MBPr but less high end than a $6K starting price workstation.
Not only are these people not "the same dope who gets the M-Sport BMW 3 Series, or the DSLR with the Kit Lens" posers, but many of us have started building $3K-$4K dollar PC based workstations, where we run Premiere, Cubase, Creative Suite, etc, because Apple won't cater to our market.
Or will only sell us a $4K iMac machine with no capability to upgrade internal SSDs, glued RAM, a built-in not-reusable screen, and no ability to use our own pick of e.g. a high end Nvidia video card.
So there's that.
Is it ok that they are now shunned? The traditional Mac Pro of yore, catered to those exact people.
The pro posers can absolutely afford a $6k bauble. Actual creative pros (outside the SF/LA bubble)? Not so much. The $2k price difference between the base-spec Mac Pro and a fully-loaded PC workstation is a new (used) DSLR body to replace your beaten-up old 5dMkII, it's a couple of nice microphones, it's a set of LED softboxes, it's three months rent, it's a new engine for your van.
Some of those struggling creatives in the early stages of their career will go on to be the next Rankin, the next Steven Soderbergh, the next Rick Rubin. Apple are already losing those people due to the dismal price-performance ratio of their hardware. The opportunity cost of buying a new mac is just far too great when you're a creative on a budget. They're keeping the wannabe DJs, but they're losing the kid running a record label out of his mom's garage. They're keeping the Instagram influencers, but they're losing the kid who's scraping together the cash to make her first short film.
The lack of expandability on the iMac and Mac Mini is a really big deal for this demographic, who tend to buy used and tend to eke out the last few viable years from a product. In the short-term, closing off the used market makes perfect economic sense; in the long-term, you're also closing off a key route into your platform for users who would potentially be extremely loyal and go on to buy many generations of high-end machines.
In the long run, that could become an existential threat to Apple's computer brand. If they lose the next generation of creatives at a pivotal moment in their career, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down. If you've grown up seeing all the genuine creatives using PCs and all the clueless posers using Macs, is that $3000 MBP a status symbol you really want to be seen with?
I would argue that for the vast majority of use cases you are describing, even the non-pro iMac would perfectly fit the bill. Any iMac from the last few years that has TB3 for eGPU and fast external storage even.
Name one professional use case that would put a reasonably specced (i7+) iMac with eGPU to its knees, to the extent it really disqualifies it. In other words, a use case that doesn't involve editing raw 8K footage or rendering 3D feature films? A professional use case for someone who could afford $4K for a PC workstation that would fit the bill, but not $5K for an iMac Pro or $8K for a Mac Pro.
>Name one professional use case that would put a reasonably specced (i7+) iMac with eGPU to its knees, to the extent it really disqualifies it.
First, try to edit a large project with 4K video and you'll soon find out. Unless you transcode for hours, the machine will be on its knees, especially with multicam stuff.
Second, computing power is not a binary "down to its knees" / "manages to do it".
I always could use a faster machine (I can afford and upgrade eventually) as a pro, even when my current machine is not "to its knees"
If it does its rendering in, say, 4 hours, it's always welcome to be able to do it in 3 hours or 2 hours. Those are hours off of my time.
If PC-using pros can do it with their GPUs/memory/etc, why shouldn't Mac using pros be able to keep up? We do compete for the same jobs, you know.
Now add video FX rendering (e.g. after effects) with many nodes and layers, 3D rendering (which already can take days for a large project), and so on.
And lastly, the iMac with eGPU is still a hassle (no upgrade internal GPU, extra costs for the eGPU cage and cables, occasional eGPU-related glitches, etc). And it's still non memory upgradable, non CPU upgradable, non SSDs upgradable, and with a screen that can't be used as a standalone screen when you get past that machine.
So, no an "$5K for an iMac Pro" is not a replacement for an upgradable rig, that can take non-Apple-marked-up upgrades, and doesn't have to come with its own monitor.
What's the point in recommending that people buy an All-In-One-PC like the iMac when they'll have to litter their desk with a pile of cabled hardware that is known to live quite well inside of PC cases?
eGPU seems silly to me for a desktop. The graphics card works very well inside of the case, the monitor works better outside of it.
The assertion was that Apple does not have any computers for professionals that need a powerful machine, but not as powerful as a Mac Pro. This is obviously assuming they need or prefer macOS over Windows or Linux for whatever reason, otherwise they might as well just buy a regular PC.
The 'pile of cabled hardware' argument seems a little far-fetched by the way, since when do 'pro users' make a big deal out of having one or two external devices on their desk somewhere? Never heard anyone complain about that in real life.
I have this setup with a Mac Mini, the eGPU just sits behind the screen where I don't see it, and it's attached with a single TB cable + power that goes straight down into a socket. A nice benefit of this solution is that I can also use the GPU with my laptop if I would need to, by just plugging it in.
For external storage, if it doesn't get moved around you can e.g. attach it to the back of the screen, the screen I use has 4 USB-C ports at the back so I don't see why this would be worse than having the drive in a box under your desk. Or you could use a NAS with 10Gb ethernet. Plenty of options. There will always be someone who can't live with the fact that there isn't a box that has all the hardware under the desk, but that's hardly saying you cannot buy a decently powerful Mac at a small fraction of the cost of a Mac Pro.
>The assertion was that Apple does not have any computers for professionals that need a powerful machine, but not as powerful as a Mac Pro.
No, my assertion is that Apple does not offer a competitively priced mid-to-high end machine suitable for professional use.
The iMac will be acceptable for some users, but not for others, because it's one-size-fits-all. In most pro audio applications, the fan noise under load is simply intolerable - you can't trick it out with Noctua fans, you can't hide the hot bits behind an acoustic partition, you're just stuck with a couple of noisy blower fans in the middle of your working environment. Lots of other pro users have similar niche needs.
The lack of maintainability is a serious issue for pro users. If something goes wrong in your iMac, you can't just order a replacement part and get back in business by tomorrow morning. A repair that would take ten minutes on a commodity box is often a lengthy process requiring specialist tools on an iMac. That's tolerable if you can afford to have a spare machine on standby, it's tolerable if you can afford to just run down to the Apple store and buy a new one, but it's a dealbreaker if (like most creative professionals) you're struggling to keep the lights on. By contrast, the last mixing console I bought was supplied with a full set of schematics; it can be completely torn down with nothing more than a PH2 screwdriver and all the PCBs and internal connectors are clearly labelled.
Apple are presenting their users with the choice between an extremely expensive and blatantly over-engineered "pro" machine, or an all-in-one that wasn't really designed for professional use in any meaningful way. There's a gaping hole in the middle of their product lineup that ignores a very large proportion of actual creative professionals.
To be honest, a comparably loaded workstation from HP is 5000$ with a massive discount for preorder. The difference is that you can get a lowered specced one if so you want.
By the way : high end photo light cost a lot - like the new XDR monitor, they too need to give the user confidence is the final result (color correctness is a bug one).
A mac mini plus egpu would cost less then and iMac and have roughly similar performance. And if you go with VII, or a couple VIIs would get you better performance then a specced out iMac Pro for half the money. It would requires dongele-ing things off the machine but it gets you what you want.
Edit: Apple should offer a more elegent solution, but long term this is probably where most of the market is going. Most people don’t need as big a machine any more, and egpus offer 85% of the performance. I expect we’ll end up with people increasingly buying cpu units,gpu units, hard drive units.
>A mac mini plus egpu would cost less then and iMac and have roughly similar performance.
And you'd have the bother of the external cables for the egpu, the extra cost of the adapter cage, slightly less performance, and no SSD/memory/etc upgradability still. And a stifled box with worse cooling than a tower could offer (and thus more throttling).
A Mac Mini with an eGpu and external drives is the closest thing to a normal desktop machine in the Apple universe, but it still is a very inelegant solution compared to if Apple offered a desktop machine between the Mini and the Pro. Also, while the Mini got a nice upgrade, for a real desktop, the processor isn't ample - the iMac at least offers an 8-core i9.
I just have a thought. What about building a case for Mac Mini. Like you could put there Mac Mini, your drives, your GPU and then connect all that stuff via thunderbolt, all in a single enclosure. Also few fans to cool everything. Did someone make something similar?
Hehe, I was thinking the same. First of all, I am surprised that none of the eGPU housings do have some space for storage drives, either 2.5" SATA or for NVMe cards. But when one is at it, make a bay for the Mini too :). Which also shows why it is so annoying that Apple doesn't just basically offer the Mini motherboard in a larger box.
You could probably build an eGPU box with the same footprint as the 2018 Mini for stacking above it: it should be just possible to fit a small-form-factor GPU in that space. It would be a lot less unwieldy and weird-looking than plunking a normal full-sized eGPU next to the Mini.
The Sonnet Puck pretty much has that form factor (just not a matched case material) but tops out with an RX570 and uses MXM form factor cards so a bit less than ideal.
All true, but let's not accept the false premise going around that the Pro is a kind of humanitarian exception being generously administered by Apple for those who truly need it, a system that you're abusing if you expect PCI slots without being able to prove that they're strictly necessary for your work. "Admit it, you could probably get by with a performance-choked video card in an expensive eGPU bay squatting next to your $2000 Mac Mini if you really wanted to. You just aren't trying hard enough. If you really loved Apple you'd just do it and you wouldn't complain."
The problem is that 'extensible' is often used as code for "able to immediately upgrade to the spec I actually want while paying the least possible to Apple". Put me in that category, I always buy desktop macs with the minimum RAM and upgrade immediately.
The thing is, if you want an iMAC Pro with a top of the line CPU, card and hard drive you'll just have to buy it from Apple that way. There's no point complaining about it, that's just the way it is. You just have to make sure the spec you buy is the spec you will actually need and for very many creative professionals a well specced Mac Pro will be absolutely fine.
> The problem is that 'extensible' is often used as code for "able to immediately upgrade to the spec I actually want while paying the least possible to Apple".
Although on one hand that was a valid market segmentation strategy. Enthusiasts can afford the base spec model and upgrade it, and "Pros" (as defined by this new model - people with unlimited corporate expense accounts) will spec their machine with Apple so that it's warrantied and supported.
The total addressable market for the niche you described would generate less revenue for Apple than Lightening cables.
Also, I think you're wrong about the iMac Pro. And the fact that you're complaining about a FOUR to SIX year lifespan? I don't even expect a car to last 6 years in any meaningful shape.
>The total addressable market for the niche you described would generate less revenue for Apple than Lightening cables.
The total addressable market for that will be much larger, and with higher margins, than the current "Mac Pro". In fact, when they did their publicity thing in 2017, the paid lip service of catering to that very crowd.
Heck, they bothered to engineer a $999 stand that doesn't even fit the high end market for their new Mac Pro, and you consider the market of Pros looking for an extensible $3K-$5K tower Mac lacking?
Laughable.
>And the fact that you're complaining about a FOUR to SIX year lifespan? I don't even expect a car to last 6 years in any meaningful shape.
That's so wrong, I don't even know where to start.
1) Tons of pros use a 4 to 6 years old computer (or more). Even more so when the computer is extensible, and can be upgraded in e.g. 3 years with faster/larger SSDs/GPUs more memory and so on.
2) Not all pros are super-rich. Someone in the $100K+ bubble might not understand how the other half lives, but among pro users, creatives are the canonical struggling group, and the one that could really use a powerful and extensible mid-range (sub $6K) Mac Pro.
3) Tons of people would be fine to use a 4 to 6 year old monitor, or more, if it's a screen of the iMac quality. The fact that they paid good money for the iMac and can't use the screen as a screen, or that Apple doesn't serve one, is not just crappy for that crowd, but also a very bad move for the environment.
I don't doubt the stand is good, or the engineering and few units / no economies of scale makes it expensive.
I doubt it matters to anyone. Pro high end studios will use VESA mounts (and perhaps multiple monitors), and spare $899 per monitor (of which they'll get multiple).
And struggling small studios who just need one such monitor, will definitely skip the stand.
It's more for the rich high end guy, wanting to have a nice looking desk.
And you don't seem to have a clue how businesses work. I do not live in the Silicon Valley bubble, I don't even live in the US, but am self-employed.
Whatever I buy for my professional use, price only has to be justifiable from a business perspective over the period of the planned depreciation. I replace my Macbook Pro every 3 years and I pick the maxed out 13" model because for my use-case - that's the most convenient form-factor. 4k for that laptop is not an issue, but even if that would be considerably more, I doubt I'd think twice about it.
If the Mac Pro would be something that I could use in my line of work and improve my comfort and workflow, so there's no value for me there, but if there was, I would not hesitate at all. Certainly if there's also the commercial added business value of being able to work on and deliver 4k and 8k HDR footage and considering the negative impact of not being able to deliver that. 8k is probably debatable, 4k HDR these days would be an absolute must I imagine? Any rig able to handle that will require an investment, as long as that investment can pay itself off - it won't be a problem.
Now if you are in some profession and need these tools but can't afford them - then business-wise, you're not in a healthy situation.
I continue to not understand why people want this. There is nothing of value that Apple provide over other brand assuming same QA. You are only buying it for the brand. And you will be paying double the price for it.
This is unlike a router where Apple said they don't provide any value, well they do, not just the ease of use but the Security and Software update, privacy stand of not selling out its users. There is little software or differentiation in Monitor.
I am not against the idea, I just doubt there are many on the market willing to spend $1000 on a monitor when it could be had for less than $600.
Each time I have replaced my development laptop, I have on occasion attempted to spec a fully equivalent machine from other vendors. I have not been able to do that.
I factor in the quality of the keyboard and monitor, and durability of the hardware. I also factor in spec-for-spec identical hardware – equally fast RAM, SSDs, CPUs (including equivalent cache and e.g. virtualization features).
Even without assigning a price to the ability to run my preferred working environment macOS, the Apple hardware has come out ahead price-wise.
This is given that I make efficient use of the hardware.
When comparing Apple’s new pro monitor, it should be compared fully. The color space, contrast, and color resolution on it are top-class. I wouldn’t need it for programming so it would be a waste. For those who do need it - for, say, film editing - I understand that it’s a pretty good deal.
This is not about the new Pro XDR Monitor. Which is a pretty damn good price if you ask me, there isn't a single monitor out there that can compete with its spec and price.
But the parent were asking for a normal 5K, Apple Branded Monitor. Or more like a LG 5K Monitor with Apple's logo. The 5K Monitor sold by LG were $1200, and it was exactly the same as the panel being used in iMac 5K. Why would you want one that has Apple logo on it, likely costing $2K, that was my question. I don't mind Apple made one, please do. But I don't see any business reason or value proposition other than "I want it".
I can imagine an $1800 Apple monitor that would compare favorably on price. Say 43”?, 6K 60Hz?, big and good color space, flawless panel, near-Homepod quality speakers, good USB-C charging.
I searched for a good monitor. I ended up buying the $900 LG 32UD99. It’s a 32” 4K IPS 10-bit HDR monitor with USB-C charging and FreeSync support. It’s pretty great! However it’s not as good as it would be if Apple had designed and made it. It’s somewhat flimsy, the panel has patchy light, and the UI is quite poor. I might in some cases pay x hundred dollars for the level of quality I’d expect in an Apple version of that niche of monitor.
HOWEVER! There are those people who pay extra for Apple just for the surface value. People who don’t actually benefit from the spec they’re paying for. I don’t disagree with that per se :) It’s just not always the case.
There is a good amount of evidence that this is a poor assumption in general. If you wanted to compare a specific brand/model then it could be true but I suspect the double the price metric given will stop holding.
But Apple internal/external monitors have had a great track record to date so it follows that they have superior QA.
I retired my thunderbolt display and my new one doesn’t even come close. Something is always broken and I have to fiddle with it. I get no video on cold boots and type in my WDE password to a blank screen.
I wouldn't be surprised if that would be the next step - monitor content analysis for ad targeting.
There are already mouse and keyboard drivers (logitech iirc) that report back to the mothership, and smart TVs (vizio iirc) that analyze the content on screen for the same reason. All hidden in a long EULA with barely positives as selling points to get the user to enable/install/use it. (sure, I use the smarts of my tv, mostly for streaming youtube on it, so it's not always entirely doubtful)
Not far fetched to see this in a computer monitor either.
The god honest truth is that what many users really want for desktops is the incredibly range, freedom and customization of the PC enthusiast hardware ecosystem and MacOS. Not specifically high-end power.
"Professionals" spend thousands of hours with their tools and the tools need to fit their personal quirks as that allows them to feel the most productive. A handful of hardware offerings that Apple prefers won't allow for it and the market is too small and too long tail for Apple to even care.
The custom hardware market lets pros assemble specifically the things they need to be productive and to rebuild at will whenever their work needs it.
The Mac Pro is a good shot in the kind of direction that pros need, but it really will only intersect with a percentage of users.
Your 3-series buyer who spent $3k on a 2013 Mac Pro to occasionally open Lightroom is a market segment that will gladly spend $6k on a 2019 to do the same.
This is the market segment that buys a RED camera for home movies and then sells it on eBay because it turned out to be too complicated to use. But a Hollywood-caliber Mac is no more complicated to use than a consumer Mac, and will likely do well in this market.
The people upset over the 2019 Mac Pro are the ones who just wanted a modular Mac like the PowerMacs of 15-20 years ago. The image-conscious buyers likely aren’t nearly as price-sensitive as you imagine them to be.
I'm not a "Pro User" but I really want a not too shabby Mac which is not Hackintosh at a reasonable price, for years. I have to switch to PC from Mac when I want to play video games, or working with Scala, etc. Even with high-end MBP.
I still like macOS most, although it freezes often because of the scheduler. Compare to Linux the rendering is far better and it's less time consuming to make everything work. Compare to Windows it's still a POSIX system. And the consistent behavior like Emacs/Bash style shortcut in Cocoa is really neat.
I actually don't need Xeon and ECC memory, but I do need i9 and GTX2080, with memory and SSD pluggable so I won't throw it away 2 yrs later.
Intellij with Scala is pretty resource consuming. It's not freezing slow but on my MBP it's a little bit laggy and noticeable. It's distracting when I keep noticing the latency so I switch to PC to have a smoother experience.
This is an absurd argument to make on this website of all websites. I sit at a desk all day and write code. Am I not a professional? How many tech companies are going to be buying $6000+ computers for their software engineering professionals? (Once you add upgrades it will be more like $10-20k)
What this professional wants is a 9900K (I'm not cheeky enough to ask for AMD), 64GB-128GB memory, support for M.2 SSDs and my choice of nvidia graphics card.
If Apple successfully called the pro-poseurs' bluffs, wouldn't that mean that they met (and surpassed) their expectations instead of going over their heads and missing them altogether?
What they want is a expandable pro machine like the iMac Pro without the screen. They want a taller Mac mini. They want something that you can build on. They aren't any less professional. They just have a different use case. The best Apple has to offer is a Mac Mini.
Let's make that clear. The next step up from Mac Mini is the Mac Pro. There is NO in between. That's a pretty big gap.
Thanks. I wasn't thinking about currency only but also the very different situation. UNIX hegemony was still alive back then. Wintel was about to take off. Internet existed but was different. Universities had different needs and budgets.
(I actually owned various SGI machines. They are very nice.)
I don't want a "Pro" machine. I do want a desktop machine. That is, a top of the line desktop processor, a full sized desktop graphics card and the ability to access the memory and storage. My only interest in a Mac Pro was, that up to 2013 it was the one Apple machine offering the feature set. Looking back I really regret not buying into the old cheese grater. While the old Mac Pros were expensive for the feature set I listed, they were still somewhat affordable at a $2-3k starting price. Doubling the starting price to $6k completely moves it out of the prosumer space. Also out of the reach of all professionals who barely can keep their business alive. (There are few photographers left who make real money for example).
I already have a Mac mini that I bought because the Mac Pro was no yet available when my old iMac die.
But is a good option for Pros?? No.
My brother, at my right at 3 meters from me, laugh in how pathetic and anemic is the Graphic card in the mini. Also, it have 20GB Ram for what I must pay (sorry, I recheck: for much less) upgrade the anemic start at the mini to at least 16GB that is already low for me (I need to integrate ERP software and run Mysql, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, firebird, windows, docker and more).
I also need to buy an external drive to put at least 1TB SSD. I already pay to upgrade to 512 SSD internal.
I already constrained in hard drive space. I buy an extra Synology.
The mini no the iMac (I have one before) is a sufficient alternative. Is what I can afford and makeshift extra cables and enclosure to match what my brother have (it work on 3d and photography).
And then, what extra magical thing for Pros this machines do? Apart of raw power, OSX are just decent Unixes, but have null of the extra capabilities of Amiga or BeOS, just to name ones...
I, like a lot of HN readers, am, in fact, a professional computer user. But many pros have different requirements. For example, I have no use whatsoever for a fancy GPU — I want something barebones that works well on Linux. Anything from Intel fits the bill. A good chunk of memory and lots of CPUs are important, though.
I think you are onto something but got it all backwards, apple went full in on the rich dad crowd, they will shell out the 6k for a machine they don't need and isn't worth that price anyway gladly because the more it costs the better display of wealth it is.
are you saying that the M-Sport 3 series is close enough in price to almost always justify upgrading to the actual M3, and that this Mac Monitor is expensive, but not the best money can buy on the market?
I’m not very interested in a Pro machine but I want an enthusiast machine and a most-performance-for-the-buck machine and an expandable machine.
Basically an iMac with a discrete screen and desktop hardware in a reasonably large box. Something that can run the Intel CPU:s that are actually sensibly priced such as the 8700K.
So many hoped the bottom line Mac Pro would be cheaper bevause is no Mac ProSumer.
Apple appear to have decided that the best (in terms of enthusiast performance per dollar) segment of desktop computer simply doesn’t have high enough margins and would cannibalize on iMac and MacPro sales where margins are much higher. And who can blame them?
If Apple made a 2019 tower with 8700K/32GB/GTX1560 and sold it at $2k it would sell a lot but every sale would cost one MacBook Pro, iMac or MacPro sale.
If I were to buy an apple desktop (I'm not) I'd be happy to pay an apple tax. But I can't buy an $6k machine when what I need is a machine that is $2k ($1.5k plus apple tax, say)
>If Apple made a 2019 tower with 8700K/32GB/GTX1560 and sold it at $2k it would sell a lot but every sale would cost one MacBook Pro, iMac or MacPro sale.
Not for a lot of apple devs it isn't (To develop for Apple you need a mac). And remember this was presented to a room full fo apple developers at WWDC. Basically saying "you aren't getting a machine this time, we made one for creative professionals. Of which there are none here". That explains the gasps at the prices.
I don't know about uni/college in USA or America but in The Netherlands brand clothing starts at high school. And nearly all brand clothing is bullshit because you pay to advertise a brand, and wear it. It is a silly status symbol. You might argue that Apple is the same. Personally, I'd say that the popular alternative (Android/Windows) is just you paying with your privacy.
Brands work on a number of levels. For fashion you would have the designer stuff, then the expensive mall stuff then a cheaper garment but which only features a huge logo. It's aspirational for many. The brand becomes more important than the quality. Thus it's about the spectacle rather than reality, hence why people may label all of it as bull.
Its why there are so many counterfeit stuff for fashion and accessories. My analysis doesn't work for IT or electron ics on the whole though. Except perhaps headphones?
I currently use a Mac Pro with eGPU for mobile development, it is super fast and near silent (Unless the GPU is being pushed.)
Even still, I'd much prefer a $2-3k Mac Pro-lite tower with i7/i9 CPU options, a few RAM slots and half the PCIe lanes of the $6k mac pro. But that is never going to happen.
1) Apple definitely should get on those Nvidia drivers. Nvidia hardware has a lot to offer and is very ahead in a lot of areas. Also, sooner or later supplier-constraining themselves is going to hurt Apple and their users.
2) Obviously there will be specific cases that call for Nvidia (or the advanced asics that Nvidia are putting out), but for most of the actual set of professional users that would do their work on a Mac, there's not really anything wrong with AMD's current GPU lineup. Their Vega cards generally do pretty decently on media production benchmarks.
> Apple flat out refusing to update their Nvidia drivers
It’s a little more nuanced than that. The link you provide goes into a little of the politics. In short, Nvidia have messed Apple around in the past, providing them with a batches of faulty processors that Nvidia refuses to acknowledge and suing them over mobile gpu design. Would you want to do business with a supplier that had done that?
Those past events were over a decade ago. Somehow, apple managed to be ok with signing NVIDIA’s drivers until now.
In general having your PC platform provider refuse to sign drivers because they have a grudge from a decade ago is concerning - what’s the next important tool they might pick a fight with and ban? Imagine if Microsoft refused to sign NVIDIA or ATI’s drivers because they had some dispute over a part in the MS Surface product line?
Other examples include Arc'Teryx clothing that is worn by VC's in Silicon Valley for wealth projection that will never see the austere environments that the clothing was designed for.
Apple made a true pro machine, and now the pro-poseurs are pissed.
BTW I am a pro-poseur, concerned with pro-image vs actual pro features. I desperately want an Apple monitor with speakers that docks to my MBP for around $1799.