As a general rule, I try to stay away from Daniel Dilger's written pieces. They're usually entirely too long for the points they're making (sound familiar? ;^D), and each has about five syllogistic fallacies that drive me bonkers. Luckily, they also tend to have such obviously biased, clickbaity titles that they're easy to filter from your RSS feed.

Accidentally stepped into one this morning. Lots to disagree with that's not worth the time, but I did want to cover this one, which I've heard from less sensationalist, smug writers:

From Editorial: The future of Apple's Macintosh:


Mac Pro



The Late 2013 release of Mac Pro may have been a mistake. Its design wasn't readily upgradable, but Apple also lacked the sales volumes to warrant regular significant update cycles. If a cycle is too long, the benefits of product cycles described above begin to evaporate. It may have been better for Apple to have designed a system other vendors could upgrade, with room for standard PCIe graphics cards and perhaps even CPU packages. [emph mine]

Though not having a PCIe slot is a fairly consistent complaint that's recently gotten a lot of press, I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that the silicon inside the Mac Pro hasn't been updated since 2013.

The PCIe complaint is really just an extension of the argument that Apple's been slack with updates. Asking for PCIe is a little like saying, "If you're not going to stay current, let me do it myself!" (Of course, that's also, imo, why it's smart to add a PCIe slot. But that's another argument...)

Here's DED's logical faceplant: There's plenty of volume for Apple to update the innards.

The enthusiast's motherboard & GPU market

My whitebox' motherboard

Every few years, I upgrade my whitebox tower; it's a computer I build myself. Every time I do, I wade through tons of motherboard options. Though the one I have in there now is still for sale on NewEgg, it's from some squirrelly third-party selling out of date hardware for over twice its original price, iirc.

Same thing with video cards. There are tons of companies rebadging Nvidia's and ATi's latest in different configurations, turning over almost completely each year. (And here, my crappy card is out of stock.)

Are you really going to tell me Apple can't afford to make just one new motherboard and video card each year?

My point is that these enthusiast computer components usually don't last long on the marketplace. You have a slew of options at any one point, but in 6-12 months, no matter how intelligently you shopped, what you bought is usually long in the tooth, replaced by one or more upgraded boards by each company in the direct-to-builder motherboard category.

Fewer Mac Pros than enthusiast Asus boards? Rly?

Does anyone really think Apple sells fewer Mac Pros than ASRock sold of their "H97M Anniversary LGA 1150"? I can't imagine that's the case for a second.

And that's where Apple's let you down. You can build an all-in-one pro model if you keep it relatively recent, and you keep it recent by upgrading the mother- and video card daughter -boards. If Apple's going to release a Mac like this, it has to commit to upgrading the motherboard, processor, and GPU options at least yearly. No redesign of the outside needed.

I understand there are issue with the trash can. Maybe there's not enough airflow for cooling a GTX 1080 with the trash can's single giant fan. Maybe it's not as forward-thinking as Apple wanted.

That doesn't mean you're stuck with 2013 silicon through 2017! And there's no reason whatsoever not to make a new motherboard that'll accept new Intel wafers each time they're refreshed. None.

If ASRock -- and Asus, and MSI, and Gigabyte -- can each release new mobos yearly for the enthusiast PC market, Apple can release one for Mac Pro users.

Apple only needed to be as committed as a reputable motherboard manufacturer -- no, less. They only needed to upgrade one mobo and GPU for one enclosure. They weren't and they didn't. It had nothing to do with sales volume. Really?

It's been three and a half years. Not enough sales volume? Three years' sales of Mac Pro are less than one year of Asus enthusiast boards?

Sales volume? That's a fail all around.

Labels: , , ,