Tag Archives: OS X

The Withering of the Mac Pro

Posted by Thelonious Mac on

There is good reason to doubt whether or not Apple will continue to create so called “Mac Pros.” The market for Macs has changed dramatically and the technology has changed drastically.

Consider the market. When Apple sells a few million Macs in a quarter, 75% of those are portable. The iMac is the easy majority of desktop sales, leaving the “Pro” machine to account  for numbers in the very low hundreds of thousands. The MacBook Air accounts for the lion’s share of Mac sales. Right there it doesn’t make much sense for Apple to continue building Mac Pros from a financial standpoint. Very few people would miss them. If these people did move to Windows, I’d be shocked because all to often they won’t be able to do what they need to do and we all know that what makes a Mac isn’t the box. It’s OS X.

Face it, the big market for Macs has shifted from the relatively minute PRO market to the massively lucrative “mobile knowledge worker” market. Apple isn’t only serving the artistically creative, they are serving the world of information management and consumption. People who are just as demanding and creative in different ways.

Consider the the technology. People who buy Mac Pros typically buy them because they have more powerful CPUs, greater RAM capacity, more storage capacity and the best graphics card that Apple supports, or the only graphics card that Apple supports. Now an iMac with Thunderbolt, maxed out on RAM delivers the performance that rivals the Mac Pro. Thunderbolt provides extraordinary data throughput, as high as 10Gbps compared to 6 with SATA or USB 3. Apple is providing fast GPU chipsets on the system boards of high end iMacs (not like you could upgrade on a Mac Pro anyway), and you can put a great deal of RAM into the iMac. You can connect multiple 27” Thunderbolt monitors if you like also.

Sandy Bridge, Thunderbolt, USB 3, 32-64GB Memory, legacy FireWire port, and your iMac Pro is ready.

Editors, designers, animators often work on 17” MacBook Pros  these days. Obviously if they can do that, they can move to a beefed up iMac if need be.

All of this sort of makes the MacPro line look more like an affectation for a small community of users rather than a necessity. Even in the small business server space, MacMinis with ThunderBolt have taken over and serve small businesses well. Not to mention that many small businesses are shifting their server requirements to the cloud. More than anything else, the “idea” that there is something or someone called a “PRO” who needs something outside what the average Mac can deliver is changing.

Consider that Apple is also re-defining who and what the “PRO” is. Is the professional the editor sitting in some dark room somewhere trying to get colors right on “Mike And Molly,” or is the “PRO” the editor/designer/animator working on the MacBook Pro from his boutique firm out of his spare bedroom in his home? Or is the PRO the person quickly cranking out episodes of their new webseries for Youtube, Vimeo, etc.?

Consequently the question isn’t just whether or not Apple will make a Mac Pro, it’s whether or not the MacPro is really needed anymore. Apple stopped making the Xserve. It just withered. The same seems to be happening with the Mac Pro.

Apple could let the Mac Pro decline all together and Pro lovers would grumble and adapt. Each subsequent iMac generation that came out would be faster and faster and eventually the MacPro would be nothing more than a fond memory. Apple could also create a beefy iMac Pro with Xeon processors, a high end graphics subsystem, maxed out on RAM etc. Possibly a sexy miniTower with 4 to 16 core chipset options, and some slots for fast SATA drives and/or SSDs could be in the works.

Ultimately though, it appears the MacPro’s days are numbered. So don’t get your hopes too high. Think about new ways of doing your work, and the advantages of being mobile as opposed to being stuck in the dark room. Consider that the new Pros are people like Felicia Day now, as opposed the Hank the good old dependable animator.

It should also be relatively obvious that the long range ideas indicate “PROs” working on iPads. Many people will say that can’t happen but while they’re saying this, Apple and others continue to crank out more imaginative iPad based video editing, photo editing, and audio editing. Don’t be surprised if in a few years you’re reading how this Academy Award winning movie or that Emmy Winning Television Series was edited on an iPad. Use your imagination. Imagine working on low res video, making your edits, and uploading an edit file to the cloud where the actual high res render takes place. Same for massive photos.

Computer programmers like to think that they will always need the biggest machines possible for compiling massive programs but I can easily see engineering being done on the iPad then sent to the cloud for compiling and testing. You could be sitting on an iPad and writing Windows software. Your compiles take place in the cloud, and you actually manipulate a virtual test machine in the cloud when you’re running the software. All on your iPad without Windows installed.

Change hits everyone.

Don’t give the Mac Pro a funeral just yet, it’s conceivable there might be one more Mac Pro, but if Apple does discontinue it, see it as an opportunity to upgrade your workflows over time. Your existing Mac Pros will continue to work, until you evolve.

NEW PRODUCT TERROR ALERT! CONDITION RED!

Posted by Thelonious Mac on

ImageWatching for new products from Apple is often like gathering and analyzing intelligence for one of the clandestine services. First of all, Apple is highly secretive and closed about their plans. They have to be. If the PC box making rabble get wind of exactly what Apple is planning, they will rush to get their own versions out ahead of time. Apple’s business is built upon creativity and originality.

Often this doesn’t mean actually inventing anything, but coming up with a better way of integrating existing technologies. Consider the mobile phone. Mobile phones existed and hand held computers existed. Apple developed a hand held computer, that happened to have a phone included, and when it became clear that Apple was indeed about to introduce a mobile phone, nothing on the market looked like the iPhone. Once the iPhone was introduced, suddenly copies started churning out left and right. Had people seen demos of the iPhone before hand, competitors could have beaten Apple to market.

Even with the concepts and design of the iPhone clearly leading the market by many months, Apple has still had to go to court defending their intellectual property. Imagine if they had shared their intentions openly before the iPhone was ready to ship.

Consequently, in order to get a feel for product announcements, you have to approach Apple like you would gathering intelligence on an enemy. You have to watch troop movements and supply chains, or who is Apple hiring and how many MacBooks are left to purchase? What’s going on with their allies? Are there any conspicuous sales of existing product? In particular you have to pay attention to the chatter.

The best chatter for monitoring Apple comes from Apple bloggers, news sites, and Twitter. Web server logs are important also. Apple bloggers are all watching everything and each other, so they tend to report when something is up. News sites will claim to have inside information (some do and some don’t).  Supply chain websites monitor what manufacturers like FOXCONN say. Twitter is a constant stream of information from which to cherry pick. Web server logs are fantastic because once they start reporting a new mysterious device, you can be pretty sure that the new device is in the hands of actual Apple employees. At this point, a new product introduction is extremely likely. You also start to get reports from MSM (Mainstream Media) such as FOX, FOX Business, WSJ, and CNBC. These guys start giving actual product announcement dates. At this point the Internet chatter reaches a feverous pitch. You can be fairly sure something is about to go down. You can dispatch a seal team to a nearby Apple Store to hold a place in line for you.

For this reason I developed my copyrighted StrategicMac Apple Advisory System, that looks a bit like our old terrorist advisory system only its cooler, and it’s just as accurate. Take a look at the scale. We are currently in RED LEVEL! PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENT(S) EXTREMELY LIKELY!

Internet Chatter indicates that at WWDC (June) a new MacBook Pro 15″ will be announced. This new MacBook will likely have a slimmer form factor. It will not taper like the MacBook Air. It will probably get rid of legacy technology like the optical drive. (Who uses that anymore anyway except slow to adapt to the always-on-connected-world College professors.) It will likely be built around new Intel Ivy Bridge Processors. It will probably have USB3.0, as well as multiple (2) Thunderbolt ports. Chatter indicates NVIDIA graphics (possibly the GeForce GT650M), and a good but not certain possibility of a Retina display. Chatter concerning a liquid metal enclosure does not appear to be true at this time.

It is also EXTREMELY LIKELY that OS X Mountain Lion’s shipment date will be announced in June at the WWDC (World Wide Developer’s Conference).

YELLOW ELEVATED Level chatter indicates a new iPhone, probably called the iPhone 5 around October of this year as well as the probability of updated iMacs before end of year.   iOS 6 is likely to appear along with the iPhone 5.

There are those who say that Apple does controlled rumor leaks. I don’t buy it. I can’t figure out why. It isn’t as if we aren’t all beating our heads on the wall trying to figure out what Apple is going to do next anyway. What do they have to gain unless its to squelch ridiculous rumors that start to float on occasion. I believe long time professional sites like 9to5Mac have informants and do a good job of sifting through chatter to create streamlined more accurate chatter, but I don’t believe Apple is creating their own rumors.

One thing is for certain. NO ONE outside of Apple knows anything for sure until the day that Apple announces a new product. Even people who work for Apple, like the retail store people, don’t know anything until the last minute, and usually by that time we all know. Most chatter  from most sources, up until the last minute usually contain more hot air than a presidential campaign speech.

I hope Apple keeps their air of mystery and secrecy. I worry that CEO Tim Cook in his apparent zeal to create a kinder, friendlier Apple might open things up a bit too much. Stay mean Tim. Make’em beg.

Apple Then and Now

Posted by Thelonious Mac on

Steve by Nitrozac

With all of our information technology and science, it seems that we human beings are more prone than ever to widely held falsehoods. Even in this day of global communications with the whole of human knowledge at our fingertips, we tend to believe the falsehoods notwithstanding easily available truth. Myths are always more compelling. Hitler called it “The Big Lie.” In short, tell a lie so big that few would believe that anyone would make something so utterly ridiculous up. There is also the relatively new concept of the “meme.”

Meme is a very useful word as it applies to information that spreads virally. An idea, concept, or some piece of “information” is transmitted from one person to the next, and spreads exponentially.

When a big lie graduates to meme status, and travels over conventional as well as new media, false knowledge can infect the group mind at the speed of light, and as Hitler indicated, getting rid of the falsehood, even in the face of demonstrable truth, is extremely difficult. We attempt to rationalize the lie, rather than believe we are just that stupid.

The reason I bring it up is that I’ve been thinking about Apple. There’s nothing unusual about that, but in particular I’ve been thinking about Apple then, vs. Apple now, with regard to the health of Steve Jobs.

It started on Friday morning 02/26/11. I had the privilege of hearing Leo La Porte advertise his radio program in Los Angeles. He was on with Bill Handle on KFI 640 AM. The subject of Steve Jobs’s health came up. Handle asked Leo about the ability of Apple to survive without Steve, and Leo, without missing a beat, essentially pronounced Jobs already dead, and that the company would follow.

This isn’t surprising. Whether it’s one of his little tirades against the iPhone and how much he loves Android, or his claims that Apple is now the new “Big Brother,” La Porte never misses an opportunity to besmirch Apple. He’s a very smart man, with a phenomenal memory for his age, and I greatly enjoy and highly recommend the potpourri of tech programming put out by his Twit.TV network, but as of late there is a detectible slant to his discourse. It’s a little sad.

In this particular example, Leo contends that Apple was fine before Steve Jobs was ousted. After that the company floundered. Upon Steve’s triumphant return, the company skyrocketed, so if Jobs were to leave for whatever reason, obviously the company would flounder again.

According to Leo’s reasoning, all of the other 50,000 employees at Apple do absolutely nothing. Steve creates the products in his head, alone with no input. Steve does the industrial design. Steve writes all the software. Steve does all the manufacturing. Every Mac, iPod, iPad, iPhone, keyboard, mouse, system board, and line of code is lovingly assembled in Cupertino by Steve Jobs.

Steve is a genius, but he’s not Santa Claus who last time I checked was still the only person who could be everywhere simultaneously in one night. Notwithstanding the strength and stature of Jobs, Apple is a large company with an extraordinary number of highly talented people.

Here’s one of those meme falsehoods that you will often hear. In fact La Porte stated it on the radio program. Steve Jobs invented the iPod. Steve’s influence on the iPod was significant to say the least, but the iPod was the brainchild of many. To begin with, it was not the only mp3 player on the market. There was a team of people involved in creating the iPod at Apple. Jonathan Ive we all know. He’s the ultra-cool industrial design guru at Apple, with the black t-shirt, great accent and five o’clock shadow.

According to one article I read the team consisted of:

  • Jon Rubinstein, then the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering; now at Palm
  • Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of design at Apple
  • Tony Fadell, an engineer and former senior vice president of the iPod division
  • Michael Dhuey, an engineer; now at Cisco Systems
  • Steve Jobs, the company’s CEO, who oversaw the project

According to the same article, the name iPod came from a freelance copywriter named Vinnie Chieco. In addition, the iPod was based on an initial design by another company called PortalPlayer. As I recall, PortalPlayer created the iPhone operating system and user interface.

There are many articles and videos on the Internet concerning the history of the iPod so you can check this stuff out yourself. The point is that any creation that comes from Apple is likely the result of interdisciplinary contributions from multiple sources and gifted individuals, not just Steve Jobs

However, don’t misunderstand me.

After Steve was forced out of Apple, by the sugar water salesman, the company seemed to enter a state of extended limbo. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the changes were so dramatic and so fast that no one can deny the power of his influence. Apple began to churn out unique products that resonated deeply with consumers. It was as if the company went from also-ran to leader of the pack over night. The first product out the door was the iMac.

In Feb. of 1996, in an interview with Fortune Magazine, Steve Jobs was quoted as saying, “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”

One way of looking at that quote is that the iMac was the beginning of the milking, and that he milked the existing Mac operating system for all it was worth using it. In 1998 the iMac was introduced. It was a revolutionary little all-in-one computer that came in multiple colors. Competitors laughed at it focusing on the different colors available and never really paying attention to what was appealing about the iMac. The iMac brought simplicity to setting up computers. It was one of the first “Legacy-Free PCs.” It dropped the floppy disk, and instead opted for a new fangled interface that few people had heard of; USB. People loved it.

In 1997, Apple acquired Steve’s other computer company NeXT, and in a nutshell the NeXT OS, OPENSTEP, became the basis for the new Mac OS, Mac OS X. A play on words, the X in OS X meant OS 10, since it was to be the next version of the Mac OS after the faltering Mac OS 9. In addition, it was hard to not to feel that the X came from NeXT. Some might say that Steve had fulfilled his promise to “get started on the NeXT great thing.”

The first public beta of OS X was released in 2000. OS X has since evolved into what is arguably the most advanced general purpose operating system on the market. Shortly after the iMac and OS X came the iPod in 2001 and soon Apple was looking at its previous troubles and competitors in the rear view mirror.

After the iPod came yet another juggernaut that I personally believed would never happen. The iPhone. Once again competitors laughed. And what happened? Almost every mobile phone worth mentioning now is an iPhone clone.

The iPhone is an interesting example. As the story goes, the way Steve tells it, Apple was working on the iPad and when he looked at was was developing he felt that what they had also created a great platform for a phone, and they shifted direction at least temporarily from the larger tablet to the smaller tablet/phone. Yes, contrary to popular belief, the iPhone is a small iPad, not the other way around.

Obviously the extraordinary success of Apple occurred with Steve at the helm. None of this would have happened had Steve not been there. Consequently some people assume that were Steve to leave, Apple would suddenly fail, at best lose steam, at worse become the same floundering post John Sculley, post Gil Amelio mess that Steve inherited.

I believe it is vital, before offering a puerile Leo La Porte type answer to ask; Is Apple 2011 the same as Apple 1996,  the Apple that Steve resurrected? The answer is obviously no.

For the last 15 years Apple has experienced quarter after quarter of record breaking results. The company has somewhere between $40 and $50 billion in cash in the bank. Serious liquidity. The entire business model of her competitors from Google to HP to Motorola, etc., seems to be based on attempting to anticipate what Apple is going to do next and mimic it as quickly as possible. The last Consumer Electronics Show was essentially an assemblage of iPad aspirants.

During this time Steve Jobs has led and groomed his company. It is impossible to work there without becoming imprinted with the Steve Jobs mind and mojo. It is relatively clear who Steve’s successor will be, i.e. COO Tim Cook. Mr. Cook has led the company before and it didn’t miss a beat.  Mr. Cook cites Apple’s laser-sharp focus as being a major reason for her success. Indeed, Apple doesn’t have zillions of kooky products and divisions. You can put everything the company makes on a conference table.

These are the influences of Steve Jobs. It is my contention that the goals, ideas, and methods of Jobs are now the DNA of the company. His drive and vision are the soul of the organization. In other words, Steve Jobs is Apple, and Apple is Steve Jobs. They are one in the same whether together or separate.

Steve’s health took a turn for the worse earlier this year. He continues to be involved and making decisions for the company though he isn’t in his office every day. Apple has just announced a new line of MacBook Pro laptops, and people are waiting literally with abated breath for the new iPads. Nary a day goes by that I don’t receive an email asking when the new iPads will arrive.

The reason I’ve written this post is that La Porte’s answer was not only simplistic, it was a disservice to the people listening.  His notion that Apple cannot exist without Steve Jobs shows no thought or analysis whatsoever, and yet he is regarded as a tech analyst by many who don’t know better.

In the event Steve leaves Apple, there will likely be a sell off of Apple stock because of people like La Porte. If and when that occurs, it should be regarded as a buying opportunity by those in the market. With or without Steve, it is clear to me that Apple will go on for a very long time setting the course for the industry. Don’t simply accept the big lie, the meme, because it is a convenient lazy answer.