After having the same exact conversation with more then one
friend about why I think the Mac Pro will be a total and complete failure out
of the gate I decided to blog this instead so I could just direct people to my
views on this new machine instead of repeating over and over.
But before I start on that, I want to also convey my
disappointment in the new OS X name Maverick. I think the name Sea Lion would
have absolutely been appropriate allowing for a transition to sea life for
themes. OS X Great White any one. It would have allowed for a change to an
ocean and water theme, a nice change form the current space theme of the last
few years. But that’s another topic.
Now to the new Mac Pro. For those that have not followed the
WWDC 2013 event or know little about the mac Pro I will go into a little
history of what is being replaced and what it is being replaced with.
The current Mac Pro, the one being replaced was a very large
silver computer that allowed for lots of internal expansion. The old Mac Pro
until the past few years had been the most powerful of Macs and the most
expensive. I say until recently because the product line has been ignored for
many years and the current iMacs include CPU’s that actually out perform the
Mac Pros. But this is not the big issue with the Mac Pro.
The real story of the old Mac Pro was its expansion
capability. It could hold massive amounts of ram internally. It was very easy
to upgrade the ram. It could also hold massive amounts of internal hard drive
storage. This is great for servers and for those working on video projects.
Neither of this is truly lost on the new Mac Pro. While it has less Ram slots,
you can fit more RAM into slots, which negate this problem. And you can easily
add external hard drive storage to a machine. Its not ideal, its not pretty but
it works.
The advantage to the old Mac Pro, which is now lost on the
new one, is the internal expansion capability with its PCI system. Lots of professional
software uses special hardware that requires PCIe. Some have transitioned to
USB or Firewire or even thunderbolt. But there are a lot of legacy owners of
expensive hardware that costs thousands of dollars, which for all intents and
purposes do not need upgrading. And then there is the hardware that only comes
as PCIe. It has been suggested that those users could purchase for a very high
price external PCIe box. Ok yes they can and that will add to the clutter of
the external hard drives. But I will get back to the external PCIe box later in
this article.
Another good feature for these very expensive Macs that you
pay a premium price for was the longevity through upgrading. Most of us
accepted paying 3 times the price for equivalent PC hardware but with it came the
ability to add functionality that gave us a long term return on the investment.
For example one of my friends pointed out the new Mac Pro supports 4k Video and
the old one does not. Yes this is true out of the box the new one does and the
old one does not. I pointed out the old one still can do 4k video and the
rebuttal was no it can’t it requires thunderbolt 2. This is also true but it
did escape my friend that the old Mac Pros have expansion slots. Nvidia
released a 4k video card in 2012 for the old Mac Pro’s. So yes out of the box
it does not do 4k video. But it has had the ability to do 4k video since 2012
because of expansion cards. And in a year form now the old Mac Pros will have
Thunderbolt 2 added through expansion cards as well, maybe. Just like the old
Mac Pros have USB 3, and PCIe Raid SSD which is as fast or faster then the new
storage speeds in the new Mac Pro. The fact you could add these things was
great. Better that it was all internal.
So this is where the problem comes in. The new machine,
which has not been priced out yet but is sure to command a very expensive premium,
is a Mac Mini on steroids. You can’t add internal expansion to it for hard
drives. So you clutter your desk with external hard drives. More cords, more
power outlets please. You can’t use legacy PCIe hardware in it forcing people
to either purchase new hardware that runs through thunderbolt or external PCIe
boxes that require even more desktop space and more power outlets. Lastly you can’t upgrade the machine beyond
what you can add to the thunderbolt ports in the future. Now considering how
advance thunderbolt is this might not be a problem. I personally can’t foresee
something that would exceed the ability of Thunderbolt. And since thunderbolt
is an external PCIe system even a machine with PCIe slots would have problems
if something were developed that didn’t work on Thunderbolt.
So what does this mean? The new Mac Pro is irrelevant. The only thing that made the Mac Pro special
was internal expansion. You could put the hard drives inside. You could put the
PCIe cards inside. The new machine has none of that. So why would any one
purchase a premium priced Mac Mini on steroids over a cheaper more disposable
iMac if all the hard drives and PCIx cards must be plugged in externally.
The answer is they wont. People will purchase iMacs, Mac
Mini’s and Macbooks. If they need internal expansion they will go PC or source out
the old Mac Pro before buying the new one. The new Mac Pro lost the only thing
that made the Mac Pro worthy of spending extra money on. The future of sales
will just shift to iMacs and Mac Mini’s, which are powerful machines. As I said
before the current iMac’s have been more powerful then the Mac Pros for a while
now since the line was not updated. The
people that still bought Mac Pros didn’t buy them for performance but for its
other abilities.
So this is why I believe Apple has made a terrible mistake, something along the lines of the G4 Cube or the Lisa. The Lisa was over priced. The G4 Cube was a desktop with no expansion ability more expensive then the G4 tower, which had expansion ability.
The new Mac Pro is a Desktop that lost its expansion ability that will be over priced. People are better off with an iMac for less if they have to turn to external accessories.
So this is why I believe Apple has made a terrible mistake, something along the lines of the G4 Cube or the Lisa. The Lisa was over priced. The G4 Cube was a desktop with no expansion ability more expensive then the G4 tower, which had expansion ability.
The new Mac Pro is a Desktop that lost its expansion ability that will be over priced. People are better off with an iMac for less if they have to turn to external accessories.
The new Mac Pro will only sell to very rich Apple enthusiasts that have to have the greatest and latest of products. It won’t sell to gamers, not that many bought Mac pros for gaming, it won’t sell to professionals and it wont sell to companies.
The real question is what effect this will have on the pro
line software from Apple like Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Logic Pro. If a music
studio that uses PCIe hardware to interface with music hardware cant upgrade to
the new Mac Pros and end up going PC, will they stop using Apple software that
only works on Mac as well? Time will tell.
Brian Boisvert
