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Comment by renaudg | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr : they designed themselves into a corner with the current Mac Pro, next ones will have modularity as a primary goal.

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Subtext: they don't actually have anything to show. There are no next ones yet. They planned themselves into a corner by assuming no one wanted this stuff, realize they're screwed, and are trying to spin their way out with press hits like this one to keep developers from jumping ship.

I read somewhere that Apple's products are in the pipeline for at least 2y before they ship, so you might be a wee bit harsh on them.

Topic title is incorrect; Schiller said "longer than this year", nothing about it being next year necessarily.

Federighi pretty much confirms this; in the 4 years since the Mac Pro, they realized that the Mac Pro won't handle hotter GPUs. But rather than immediately beginning work on a Pro that would handle better GPUs, they just thought better iMacs would be good enough "and really put a lot of our energy behind that". They thought iMacs would be "pro" enough, until the backlash got too much and now they're scrambling to regain developer/professional confidence.

They thought iMacs would be "pro" enough, until the backlash got too much and now they're scrambling to regain developer/professional confidence.

Yet another indication of how out of touch with their customer base they've gotten?

Yes. They live on laptops. They develop on Macbook Pros, with (Linux!) servers in a private cloud for heavy computational lifting.

The key idea of the Macintosh and the NeXT---the personal computer---is no longer foremost. Maybe it's time to swing back that way again.

All that money and design talent, and they couldn't have come out with something like this in the interim?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdtZEcppLQY

More than that, I think they've only just realised they have a serious problem, and just started the MacPro redesign process within the last month or so.

So this is a panic PR move to stop core content creator loyalists jumping ship. If they were further advanced they'd be previewing stuff, not just bumping the trashcan specs a little.

I'm still not sure this is very developer friendly. Developers are a niche within a niche, although a disproportionately influential one. Developers probably care more about the MBP than the MacPro, and the MBP is where it is.

For the MP - I would guess we'll see previews in the autumn, with shipping early next year.

> next ones will have modularity as a primary goal

For apple engineers or for the customers? The words from apple make it seem like the goal is to improve modularity so that apple can make easier changes.

Or it will be very thin and pretty :-)

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