Jason Snell, writing for Macworld:
The Mac Pro and Mac mini have languished for several years with nary an update. And MacBook Pro users were hungry for a new model—and fueled by constant rumors all year of brand-new laptops that were just over the horizon.
Then we finally got the new MacBook Pro, and it’s loaded with a lot of cool stuff, but…the reaction wasn’t quite what Apple might have expected from the hungry crowd of Mac users.
And:
Apple’s Phil Schiller told the Independent that he was surprised by the negative reaction to the announcements. Maybe Schiller wasn’t aware of the undercurrent of concern and anger among Mac users who feel that Apple has deprioritized the Mac, and that the lack of updates to the Mac Pro becomes more frustrating with every passing day.
And:
Some of that concern and anger is reasonable, and some of it isn’t. But even the less reasonable reactions are Apple’s fault for letting it get to this point. The longer you go without Mac updates, the more time customers have to combine their anger and frustration with wishcasting about the product that will solve all their problems and make everything better.
First, this is a great read. Definitely resonated with me, felt like Jason really captured the feeling of the community as a whole.
Second, at the heart of this is managing expectations. No matter your reaction to the new MacBook Pro or your particular need for a Mac Pro, Apple let this pot simmer way too long. I do think Apple has ignored the needs of developers by not keeping up with the Mac Pro. I’m curious what their in-house developers are using to build iOS, macOS, Xcode, Swift, and all the other tools used to create the Apple ecosystem. Are they living with the Mac Pro of yesteryear? Are they using MacBook Pros? Some skunkworks machine?
The MacBook Pro that ships to the public is one thing. But the tools that create the rest of the tools are fundamental to Apple’s success. I’ve never understood Apple not keeping developers in the fastest gear possible.
The blame rests on Intel and AMD more than Apple as far as the Mac Pro goes, though now it’s shifting to Apple given that the parts are finally available. There simply weren’t better GPUs to stick in until recently, and Intel’s performance gains with each new CPU revision are pathetic.
Is that true? The video cards in the Mac Pro were top of the line until recently? And Xeons too? No better Xeons since 2014?
The new desktop CPUs from Intel are shipping to manufacturers today – including a Xeon part – http://www.anandtech.com/show/10802/desktop-kaby-lakes-lineup-base-frequencies-chipset-names
If Intel can’t slake the desires of high-end Mac users, many parts of Apple’s OS and apps rely on plentiful GPU power. They should parallelise the GPUs they put in iOS devices.
16/48/96 low-power GPUs used in an iPhone will soon be more powerful than GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA. It’s about time the promise of Sony’s Cell version of the PowerPC architecture was delivered by Apple’s skilled microprocessor developers.
I say that Apple made a bet that they lost. They were betting on Intel not falling behind on chip development. So Apple was skipping a generation that came in late. If Apple decided to have a revision of hardware every year instead of betting on major revisions every other year (or less frequently) buyers would be happier. And the MacPro should have been getting new graphics cards every year. Combination of keeping prices stable while the hardware ages does not make people happy. Of course Apple shouldn’t release a minor upgrade if they expect a major release in 2 months. And the last version of the Mac mini was more of a downgrade, can’t blame Intel for that decision.
No, there really weren’t better GPU’s. AMD has been struggling to get Polaris and Zen out. Thankfully, they’ve finally pulled through.
As for Intel, the IPC gains have been 5% at best. The main benefit of Haswell/Broadwell is power consumption savings, which isn’t a big focus of something like the Mac Pro.
The problem is not neglecting the Mac. The problem is that all matters pertaining to design (important products anyhow) go thru Jony Ive, and he clearly does not want to work to anyone’s schedule but his own. I am willing to bet there have been and there are internal debates if not fights over the apparent neglect of the Mac. Only one man has enough power to defy such external and internal pressure – Jony. Perhaps, the recent promotions of Dye and Howarth signal delegation of decision-making responsibilities.
Actually, you can. Intel no longer made the low-power, low cost quad core that Apple had used in the 2012 mini. There’s no way Apple was going to slap the 4570R or a comparable chip in.
How many genuine alternatives does Apple have for desktop CPU chips?
I’ve seen tweets here and there suggesting ‘hackintosh’ machines are being used in Cupertino because of the Mac Pro situation. I hope i’m wrong though.
Intel is the reason. Apple is the unfortunate messenger.
Possibly off-topic, but I think it’s hilarious that one of the high-rotation commercials I’m seeing on television is a co-branded Intel/Lenovo supplication to consumers to PLEASE buy a new computer, already. I hope Michael Phelps got paid well for the privilege of looking foolish in it.
There is no chance of that.
Oh god… First, the new MacBook Pros ARE the fastest things out there or rather in that mix. No one intelligent is talking about the CPUs, it’s the RAM that bothers some people. I see why, but it IS an edge use case.
Second, yes, Apple hasn’t managed expectations well. They need to put up or shut up on the Mac Pro and they should be revving things every year-18 months at least.Yes, people need to understand the CPU cycle but Apple can do better. The MBP issue really seems to have been mostly the early SKylake mobile CPUs being, ah, not reliable so hopefully we’ll see a more return to a more frequent cycle in the future.
Third, “the reaction wasn’t quite what Apple might have expected from the hungry crowd of Mac users.” is utter BS. A friend just tried to order a mid-range MBP (The $1800 one). Delivery? Mid-DECEMBER. Do not mistake the online whining of tech bloggers and a fraction of the user base for the reaction of ‘Mac users’ who are giving feedback not with puerile tweets but hard earned cash.
whole lotta guesses presented as facts. nice work!
yeah right.
i’m on a 2014 MBP and using it for development including VMs for windows databases and dev environments. what on earth am i doing wrong??!
yup. classic techie echo chamber — just a bunch of princesses who make their names and money by bitching about anything and everything. Marco, Snell, etc…
The problem is more of tech medias echoing internet noises, than Apple itself.
This isn’t really about Apple. It’s about computer enthusiast who are upset that the computer industry is no longer progressing at the clip it once was. People got hooked on specs and massive year on year performance gains and are struggling to adjust to the new norm. We all have a tendency to place far too much emphasis on our tools (i.e. “Oh, you’ve got the new Canon DSLR, that’s a great photo”). As professionals we just have to keep in mind it is our talents and hard work that determine our success.
Wait, Schiller is SVP of Worldwide Marketing at Apple, it would be negligent of him NOT to know about current user sentiment. Jason, you’re letting him off too easy.
Hardware component manufacturers (OEMs) haven’t been able to keep up with past performance. The future on speed specs is not encouraging. You can go with more cores, but that eats into energy efficiency. Perhaps, Apple is obligated to NOT throw OEMs ‘under the bus’ here. I’m sure they are well aware of the climate on their hardware.
I’ve concluded Apple is simple pouring more resources into iOS device development since that’s where they get the lion’s share of revenue, and it’s super competitive.
Unfortunately, for us, Apple is not yet the hardware juggernaut we need them to be. You can bet they are working on it tough.
I’m on a 2011 MBP with maxed RAM and a SSD and getting along just fine with a couple of VMs, dozens (hundreds?) of Chrome tabs iTunes, Outlook, occasionally Photoshop and a bunch of apps that I don’t generally consider resource hogs.
I know everyone is different, and I’m certainly not doing any local compiling or rendering which I assume would slow things down, but I don’t get the need for speed just because you are a developer.
Developers? Sure, but what about the photographers struggling with 50+ megapixel raw images or video editors and 4K. My ideal Mac would be more about speed and upgradability than how nice it looks on the desktop.
iOS device users: “We love Apple innovation.”
macOS users: “No more innovation. Just faster CPUs.”
The Verge: “You’re innovating it wrong.”
I like to think that Snell can be a better voice of reason, now that he’s an independent who’s not working full-time for IDG.
“They need to put up or shut up on the Mac Pro …”
I think they’ve nailed the “shut up” part.
Here’s how the tech media will handle any possible Mac Pro update:
Most macOS users don’t want innovation.
They cling, hard, to their pet features & peripherals.
They only want faster CPUs (and buses and memory.)
And also more internal RAM / SSD.
Oh, developers. Look, I’ve got sympathy for people doing 4k (or better) video. They’re likely running up against real limits. They’re not Apple limits, but they are limits.
But developers?
Look. I am a developer, okay? Would I love faster hardware? Well, sure. But I think the last five years have seen more improvement to the speed of my workflow than ever before. It wasn’t the CPU, it was everything else: bus, storage and Internet.
Let’s see Intel put out a good CPU that’s 50% faster and Apple NOT USE IT before we wring our hands in terror at Apple abandoning us.
Cute. But what I mean (and I think you know this) is that they either need to publicly commit to the Pro or discontinue it. Even though I don’t need that power, I’d much rather see them commit to it but they should do one or the other. Updating 3x a decade don’t work unless they make the machine user-upgradeable.
innovation is a meaningless word. Too many people equate it with ‘change’, esp change that they like.
Honest question – why a laptop then? Laptops have never been upgradeable at their core (the CPU/GPU). If raw power and capacity is a concern, why not use a desktop? I get that sometimes you might be in the field, but it seems that the times you’re a) in the field and b) need to edit stuff like that a lot are pretty rare. Or am I wrong on that?
My take is that the people who can’t fit what they need to do into 16g are very rare. That a good fraction of the complainers are simply complaining because they see a shiny (32gig RAM) and can’t have it rather than out of practical need.
Let’s be fair, as much as I don’t like the slow updates on the Mac line, there is not really much Apple could do without new Intel CPUs.
As far as Mac Mini goes, I think they should switch to the Core M for fanless operation.
I have to admit I like each machine I buy to have more RAM than the last. My current machine has 16GB; even though it’s enough for me, I’m deeply unsatisfied with the idea of getting another 16GB machine.
I think a whole lot of us (myself included) have forgotten how unimaginably large 16GB of memory really is. Sure, you can exceed it with video, but… it’s a lot of data, folks. We used to say a page of text was about 2kB. 16GB is well over 8 million of those pages.
Oh, I agree. I was not thinking of the laptop at all.
Ok, aside from ‘more more’ – why? I mean, sure, new toy and all that and I do get the idea of being disappointed that you can’t. have that on a kind of emotional level, but a lot of the criticism I’m seeing is far beyond a first reaction and makes it seem like they can’t work in 16gig. As someone whose first Mac was 128k… I do kind of smile at the idea that you can’t be a true pro without 32GIG.
The first Mac was like the first iPad. Too little RAM and quickly orphaned by Apple. 😉
I’m not going to disagree with people who say they need 32GB of RAM, but I do wonder a.) what they are doing, and b.) whether the increasingly speedy SSDs Apple includes in the MBPs helps decrease the need for physical RAM.
In 2011 I went from a ~2008 13″ MBP with 8GB and a spinning disk to a 13″ MBA with 4GB (the max at the time) and an SSD, and overall system performance on the latter was way better.
That’s 100% false…LeNovo has entire lines with upgradeable CPUs and ram!
Oh, you’re absolutely right. Kind of my point, really: up until this point, I bought computers infrequently enough that they always had more memory available when I came back. No more.
I’d guess that Apple’s internal developers have iMacs with multiple monitors. Screen real estate is a huge boon when you’re writing software. The difference between them and 3rd-party developers is that 3rd-party developers have to pay for their machines. When you have to pay for your tools you’re more concerned with longevity and upgradeability. My personal issue with the design of new Macs is that, aside from the 27″ iMac, none of them have upgradeable RAM or hard drives. Buying a 2TB SSD today is insane. I’d like to get a 512GB drive now and upgrade to 2TB in a couple years when the prices are reasonable.
One thing the higher price of new MBP has done is make me start evaluating whether I need one at all. I’ve switched to an iMac as my main machine at home so I just might not need something that powerful when I’m at work or on the road. I might be able to get by with an iPad. It’ll be weird, though. A MacBook Pro has been part of my leaving-the-house bag for over ten years.
Schiller has had a few interviews since the announcement last week.
How come no one ever seems to ASK him about the Mac Pro and the other Macs in the lineup?
I know the won’t “comment on future products”, but just ask where he see’s those Macs sitting in the product lineup. Is the Mini meant to be a little workhorse that gets updated every 4-5 years? Do they see the Pro being replaced by iMacs / MBP?
(Also ASK about update timelines for iPod Touch, (iPods in general), iPhone SE, iPads etc.)
Schiller is Apple’s Product Marketing dude – ask him some questions relevant to his portfolio.
It’s not just the Mac Pro. Apple has devoted so many resources to iOS and iPhone that it has let the Mac ecosystem fall into starvation mode. The MBP announcement was pathetic attempt to inject some last-minute fluids into the patient. As a developer, I have to plan future efforts and resource expenditures as well. Apple is making me question if I need to devote time and resources to the platform going forward.