Have You Told Apple You Want A New Generation Mac Pro?

[Craig Seeman]

[Kevin Patrick] “It hasn’t been updated since 2010?
Sales are probably the lowest, both in units and revenue. “

MacPro sales don’t get much of a sales boost when updated. The problem is the updates are usually just speed bumps.

Many people who go back to MacPro 2006 are still using them without a compelling reason to update. The turnover is low.

Growth is low because many will opt for the top iMac with two thunderbolt ports.

Thunderbolt is not a compelling reason to update because many MacPro users are using PCIe to connect to comparable peripherals.

Apple likes compelling people to buy new computers (which is good business sense). FCPX didn’t do it to the extent they wanted (I believe). People who could, just upgraded their GPUs even though Apple didn’t officially support the new GPU in the older box.

I do think the MacPro will be replaced though. A box with powerful CPU/GPU and Thunderbolt only would move people over time to keep compatible with Thunderbolt peripherals bought for their other Macs.

Thunderbolt has been compelling for the rest of the Mac line because MacMini, MacBookAir, MacBookPro, iMac are all now expandable with either one or two ports equal to PCIe 4X (and daisy chain so not limited to one device). That’s a major improvement so people even with 2009/2010 Macs (not Mac Pros) may consider upgrading to 2011 versions get expandability.

A speed bumped MacPro may not be compelling. A new Thunderbolt Pro might be (MacThunderPro).

[Bernard Newnham]

“are we allowed to say the words hackintosh?

I’d never buy one, and one person I don’t know doesn’t have a Hackintosh working rock solid for a year as a Smoke Nuke Adobe FCP station at home.”

I definitely don’t have a Hackintosh humming away next to me – ‘cos it’s switched off at the moment. If you follow the tonymac86 iBoot Multibeast tutorial, they’re easy to build, and run all the software. I usually load all the updates, but they now seem to be all about preparing me to move to Lion, which I don’t plan to do.

B