Comment by drawkbox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drawkbox | Hacker News Reader

If they stop selling the Mac Pro they have lost many game developers for their platform, iMacs are nice and I have a couple but I still need a beast. A laptop doesn't cut it for much of the 3d work and production you need to launch games. Most game devs I know making cross platform including myself have a Mac Pro beast that runs OSX and Windows. This is needed.

I think this is a HUGE error on the part of Apple and makes me wonder if Steve Jobs wasn't just really good but absolutely horrid at picking CEOs. Or maybe they are updating the line like they mentioned in 2013 and these are the older ones.

I actually thought Apple would be smart and use their advantage to own desktop as well (which is a big market for them and not attractive to others). Most of the people I know that got Apple desktops/laptops get into their devices and vice versa. At a time when Windows loyalty is weak I think this is an error. Maybe I am skewed by the industry I am in but I need a big machine that runs OSX! I do tons of work on my iMacs and Mac Pro but wouldn't rely on just iMacs yet.

If iMacs are their biggest machines I suspect many game developers going Hackintosh and that is a HUGE missed opportunity. Sometimes you just need a tower that can expand big time.

> If they stop selling the Mac Pro they have lost many game developers for their platform

They stop selling the current Mac Pro where it's now out-of-regs, because they're expecting to release a redesign this year (or so Cook stated last year: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1383915). There is little sense in possibly significant alterations to the current one for a minority of the world (at best, resellers still have inventory after all) when a new model is on the way.

Out of curiosity, what regulations is the current Pro now running afoul of?

Technically it's not now, it's March 1, and it's the latest revision of IEC 60950-1

A) Anyone who's developing games for iOS or Mac on a Mac Pro in Europe already has a Mac Pro.

B) This is just a regulatory issue with the current model and will be fixed in the next revision.

C) For many tasks, the i7 iMac with 32GB of RAM and a Thunderbolt drive array is nearly as good as the Mac Pro (4-core). Obviously it can't compete with the 12-core but not many of those are sold.

D) Tim Cook was instrumental in making Apple what it is today. He's doing a fine job. You have no idea what you're talking about.

On C) Yes I have 2 iMacs one a recent and love it, but still need a beast to run windows and osx. I don't like to take that space on my iMacs. I have also had a drive fail in 2 iMacs and I do like to have access to expand on dev machines. Swapping a video card or drive really is not fun on iMacs.

On D) I agree, I was overreacting to my tool of over 5 years going away. As long as the update comes through like Cook said. If not I feel Apple is making a mistake and this reflects on the CEO and direction, believing too much in 'post-pc'.

However, I do know what I am talking about regarding gamedev needs. Windows is part of that in parallels or bootcamp and a portion of your drives - including enough processor and memory to run both, if there is no 2013 refresh changes will take place in gamedev'ing for Apple. That will be a clear signal the biggest machine is the iMac.

Apple is a hardware company, they should always have something like the Mac Pro that is a market need/demand even if it is not directly as profitable. 4-5 years for an update and only a hint of an update does not leave one satisfied. Cook has been in charge at least half that time.

If they don't have a beast to buy that I can swap out the video card on or add a drive easily on occasion that means a windows tower will be back in my office. I got rid of the last one a year ago for parallels and bootcamp but only run that on Mac Pro now. It isn't like they play in the low end commodity desktop market, this is high end, higher margins than most. Passing on good customers if they bail.

I dunno, if there's one company that I can imagine would drop an entire market, it would be Apple. I wouldn't like it, but fortunately for me I don't really need a really powerful machine (I do mostly web development on a two year old 11" MacBook Air).

I'd hate to see this occur, and I don't think it will anytime soon, but it seems possible to me.

If you are developing a cross-platform game, Parallels or VMWare will only get you so far. At the very least you'll need to test on an NVidia card as well as AMD and Intel HD. A Windows machine is inevitable in this case.

The good news is for managing these you can Remote Desktop into them for most things like setup and build monitoring.

I love the Mac Pro, it's a great platform, but don't think it's going away just yet. This regulatory snag is really unusual and only happened because Apple's investing a ton of effort in the 2013 model of the Pro.

This wasn't Apple's decision. Tim Cook also said Apple would be having something for Mac Pro customers later this year seeing as the current Mac Pro hasn't been updated in ~3 years. With that said, 2012 iMacs are extremely fast machines.

> HUGE error

Yeah those lost $0.5mm worth of sales are really going to kill Apple off.

constructive comment.

On a more meaningful comment to yours, its not the millions they lose not selling it to those game developers, its the millions that they lose because games are being developed for their system, which is very much a big deal. Having developers on your platform is very important, and in order to have that, you have to give them the right tools, and if you are a hardware company like Apple, that includes the right hardware.

I suspect that drawkbox's point was that it would have a ripple effect - Fewer MacPros mean fewer games, fewer games might mean people are less likely to switch in general.

While I think the comment was overstated, when you stop selling to people who produce something your customers really desire, the effect is much more that the amount you aren't getting from your producer.

Think of the impact, for example, if MS said Valve could no longer have/use MS software[1]. The effect would be much more than the paltry amount Valve spends on MS licenses.

1. Yes, the two cases aren't even in the same ballpark (hence the "overstated above"). I'm just illustrating the point.

Leaving long time customers without options except to leave the platform is a huge error, really how hard is is to keep a line of Mac Pro going, it isn't losing money and there is a whole line of creators that are saying 'continue to take my money'. Amazingly enough, people still use PCs in the post PC era to make content for non PCs.

Many of the best developers on their platform use the Mac Pro. They also heavily influenced others adopting Apple devices. I think it seems small but the influence and impact of this decision is more than the revenue. iMacs will take the place of many of these customers like designers maybe but developers still want a beast with up to 64GB of RAM and 12 cores. You can easily run OSX and Windows dev at same time on it.

Might even be an immense error. I for one am disappointed if they don't hold true to the 2013 update. Once you go Hackintosh, why buy iMacs either if you have all that setup? Why walk away from die hard customers? They haven't even tried to grow it. So it could be much bigger and the desktop market for Apple is still untapped for the most part.

According to this[0], this is closer to $6B - $7B per year. [0] http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy12datasum.pdf

"Desktops" includes the Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Pro, of which the Mac Pro probably makes up less than 10% of the sales by revenue and 2-3% of the sales by volume.

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