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Apple’s strong Mac sales
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10 GB of RAM is probably too low. When I run FCP X it always seems to be running with over 7 GB. Having t least 16 GB is preferable. I have 24 GB. With only 10 GB, you’re probably running into situation when you are paging. Which you can obviously check in Activity Monitor.
Also, running FCP X and Lion can be an issue for RAM. Many people seem to have an issue with Inactive Memory with this combination. And this will cause performance issues. I see it quite a lot. It appears that people don’t see it on Snow Leopard. A simple work around for this is to run the purge command in Terminal. You can also get some free apps in the App Store to do this as well. I run purge all the time, while FCP X is running, never had an issue. Open up Activity Monitor, choose the option to show the Memory usage pie chart when hidden. That way you can see your Inactive Memory status by simply showing the Dock icons. When it gets too big (like over 1-2 GB for me) run purge.
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[Phil Hoppes] “Apple currently runs around 3% R&D as a percentage of sales last time I looked. Assuming this works across the board that would translate to about 21M/yr for the MacPro group.”
I wouldn’t expect the R&D on the Mac Pro to be more than a fraction of the R&D of iOS, OS X, iPhones, iPads, or MacBooks. If anything, the Mac Pro requires the least R&D of any Apple product. It is largely Intel guts and the industrial design hasn’t been touched in half a decade, and even then it was a revision of the G5 case.
[Phil Hoppes] “Figure an average engineering salary around 120K/yr that roughly translates to about 175 people to support MacPro’s. My first guess is this sounds actually pretty high to me having worked in the PC industry for over 20 years but lets use that number. “
Even if we allow that your figuring of the Mac Pro R&D budget is in the ballpark, there is a lot more cost involved in R&D than salaries. There is prototyping, materials, etc. Regardless, there is no way there are 175 engineers dedicated to the Mac Pro. Or probably any Mac for that matter.
[Phil Hoppes] “The real question Tim Cook and the rest of Apple management are asking themselves I’m sure is what is the opportunity cost of having those 175 engineers working on MacPro’s where we could have them working on iPad’s, iTV’s or some other new product. When you look at just what has been done for Apple revenue because of iPad sales alone it does not take rocket science to see that there may be better product opportunities to be spending your precious R&D dollars.”
We can look to the Xserve for guidance here. We know from statements following its EOL that the Xserve was considered to small to matter and Gartner figured sales of about 40,000 units annually. So is the Mac Pro in the same boat? The Mac Pro must have a much broader market than the Xserve ever had, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still too small to succeed.
Right?
Maybe not.
What if the plan all along was to consolidate the Mac Pro and the Xserve? What if Craig’s guess at the Mac Pro’s replacement (which I fully concur with) is that consolidated product? A workstation/server hybrid box that can go in a rack but is sold as a mini tower would be just that thing. We could be wrong, but it is certainly a plausible theory.
Intel is due to finally ship the Xeon E5-26XX chips this quarter. Stay tuned.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] “Even if we allow that your figuring of the Mac Pro R&D budget is in the ballpark, there is a lot more cost involved in R&D than salaries. There is prototyping, materials, etc. Regardless, there is no way there are 175 engineers dedicated to the Mac Pro. Or probably any Mac for that matter.
“I was simply trying to apply some credence to what MacPro sales probably are and what it takes to support them. Personally, I’d be very surprised if Apple breaks 200K Units/Yr. And, no.. I don’t think it takes near 175 people to support, again I was ballparking some numbers based upon my work in the PC industry. For Apple sans chip development, making test boards, etc. is peanuts compared to salary. Doing IC development is HUGH in expense. That is what I use to do. You need to drop about 5 to 10 million in just software to get a small group of designers going and then proto and development cost are through the roof. MacPro’s don’t require that. Apple uses Intel Chip sets and off the shelf IC’s. I would agree with you that I’d be floored if they used more that 20-30 people tops that could be considered “dedicated” MacPro R&D and Support staff.
That being said, I think its a lot of poppycock that some think Apple “Needs” to support the high end workstation market for some status or another ridiculous reason. Apple is a public corporation. Tim Cook’s job is to maximize shareholder value. Some products are produced as they are strategic and enable significant sales of other products. When I made uControllers my company use to sell development systems too. They were marginally profitable but they were necessary to sell the uControllers, thus they had strategic value. One could make an argument that MacPro’s and ProApps were symbiotic and sales of one fostered sales of the other and in the days of FCP6 and FCP7 that was most certainly true. Now, with i7 Quad core iMacs and FCPX I personally believe that the symbiotic relationship to a MacPro is darn near non-existent. There is an ever decreasing number of very high end pro users that require a box with slots and an every growing number of high end pro users that are finding they don’t need it or won’t for very long. I just believe personally that the curve that plots the market demand for such hardware is a curve that is pointing down. The synergy that once existed between other companion products within the Apple line is no longer there.
All that being said, they may spin it one last time. Hell, look at FCP Server. They flailed with that for years, finally released it and then killed it. A new MacPro may be around the corner but I for one certainly would not bet my business on it. If I truly needed a box with slots, I look else where or, if I really wanted to stay on a Mac platform, then I’d look to see how I could get my work done on products that have an upward development curve, not one with one foot in the grave.
That’s just MHO.
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Mac Pro:
All said, nothing would prevent Apple to license mac osx to a company like HP (who have asked Apple since the days of the Alpha workstation to do that) IF they don’t want to do it themselves (if they don’t need the distraction). The worst that would happen is increase mac osx penetration and make more money.
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Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn’t make money selling operating systems. Lion at $29, like other Apple software, sells computers.
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I’m talking about the interface.
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[Richard Herd] “I’m talking about the interface.”
I think that’s what I’m talking about, too. But who knows?
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[Craig Seeman] “Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn’t make money selling operating systems. Lion at $29, like other Apple software, sells computers.”
How does that work? When you buy a new Mac you get Lion with it.
But, on the whole, I agree with you: Apple sells subsidised software to eventually move hardware. Which is exactly why several annoying factors come into play: such as disregard for backwards compatibility and team play. Not all of that is inovation by any means.
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