This was a bizarre day to say the least. We woke up this morning to news that Apple is indeed working on new Mac Pros, but they won’t be ready this year. That is huge coming from Apple and its news that I welcome.

As John Gruber pointed out in his piece Apple was stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they stay quiet, they continue to endure the thoughts from pro users that the company is abandoning them. If they speak up, they give away their plans and they also can’t release product in 2017.

What to do.

Apple made the correct choice. Pro users I’ve spoken with over the past few months were beyond frustrated with Apple, and I completely understand. Most of us kept holding on hope that the company was working on something, but it was increasingly difficult to explain why it had been so long since something was released.

At the very least we needed a bone—something to let us know that they heard us. Something more than the words that the pro market was important to them. We needed something substantial, something we could count on.

That’s exactly what we got. But we got a bit more too—here’s what Phil Schiller said about the Mac Pro:

With regards to the Mac Pro, we are in the process of what we call “completely rethinking the Mac Pro”. We’re working on it. We have a team working hard on it right now, and we want to architect it so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we’re committed to making it our highest-end, high-throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers.

As part of doing a new Mac Pro — it is, by definition, a modular system — we will be doing a pro display as well. Now you won’t see any of those products this year; we’re in the process of that. We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do.

Unless I’m mistaken, that is exactly what pro users were looking for in a Mac Pro. I know many of the people in the music industry I’ve spoken with are very happy. I know it is certainly more of what I’m looking for in a high-end music creation machine.

In the meantime, Apple is releasing updates to the existing Mac Pro lineup. They will also release new iMacs and the Mac mini is not dead yet either.

We asked Apple to give us new pro-level Macs or at least tell us what the hell was going on. They did that today.

I’m not excited to wait another year for a Mac Pro, but they need to get this right before it’s released. I’m not a hater of the existing Mac Pro—I think it’s a really cool machine. I just don’t think it fit with what many of the pros needed to get their work done.

The machine they announced today sounds like a winner. I can’t wait for next year.