The MacPro is more than what’s in the box

(but most advocates forget or ignore this)

Being keen to buy the MacPro I’ve been sponging up every detail I can find about it as a pacifier until I get finally get one purring under my desk. (And another under my partner’s desk too!)

So when Daniel Eran Dilger @ AppleInsider recently published a series of deep and detailed articles about the MacPro, Apple’s process and why keeping a top-tier piece of hardware in Apple’s product lineup was a great idea I just had to read each one eagerly. After all, I have been very concerned for a long time about wether Apple really cares about people and companies like us.

While I found his insights detailed and educational, I couldn’t help but feel that the main reasons we’d be investing in a system like this were not even in Daniel’s top 10. And I took issue with the undertone of the articles seeming to prop up Apple’s delay as either being planned or inconsequential to the user base.

We own a small video production and post-production company and for almost (gasp) 20 years we have marched through several generations of Mac desktops (and even a painful period with Windows’ PC). Our needs are both small and large. Our clients expect Hollywood on a budget and delivered in weeks or days rather than months or years. We preform all tasks including editing, compositing, 2D animation, 3D animation, videography, lighting, and…well, you get the idea. We do a lot. For the first 8 years of our operation we were strictly post and that is still our fundamental DNA here. So our computers are pretty darn important.

Rendering and transcoding and compositing are very demanding on a computer and it may seem like be our strongest argument for a MacPro would be power. But when it comes to our decision making process there’s more to it that one may assume. Here’s our five thoughts on the upcoming MacPro and why we’ve waited “patiently” for it to arrive.

Cost:

A guy we know who runs a limo company has a fleet of Mercedes. The upfront cost of Mercedes was not a determining factor for him because the cars would run without maintenance for-e-ver. After all, if his cars were not on the road then he wasn’t making money. So too with our Pro systems. If our computers are not running then we are losing time and money.

As a small video production company we have always had an successful strategy of investing in the top-of-the-line equipment (there is little middle road consumer hardware or used gear in our lineup) because we felt we got the most life out of these purchases. Technology being so fickle, the turnover so fast — we wanted to make sure that what we bought would offer us the range and flexibility we needed to run them for the longest time. And a higher quality item often lead to worry-free performance. The MacPros were no exception. Typically we could get anywhere from three to four years on every system before we felt the need to leap again. And in the tech world that was pretty darn good! An iMac Pro would not offer those advantages. So our investment in these future new MacPro systems is a no-brainer.

Once we have invested, however, we do want to try and maximize our purchase. Again, we are a small company. So we don’t have deep pockets. If swapping in a new graphics card, adding more RAM and/or adding SSD drives keeps our system tip-top at minimum fuss or expense, we’re all for it. And that’s partly why were been running our silver 2012 towers for so long without jumping to an iMacPro. We can just keep them going. Albeit not indefinitely.

Savings:

Every time the MacPro is brought up between my tech/nerd friends they will always pull out the same argument, “You could build a custom super-fast PC for SO much less!” Yes, yes we can. Hands down. No argument. And if cost was the only factor in our world then that would be the logical conclusion. (It would also mean we’d be out of business because most of our competitors charge less than we do.) Fortunately cost is never the only factor and rarely the first priority for ourselves or our clients. And if speed were the only concern we’d all be driving Formula 1 cars to and from work. But the variety of cars on the road are a testament to a wide gamut of needs from consumers — especially professionals. What most fail to see is the savings of both money and time we get from buying an “expensive” MacPro.

We are entrenched in an Apple ecosystem. We have iPhones and iPads and AppleTVs and MacPros and MacBooks and Watches and peripherals and accessories and so on and so on. This harmony between all the devices adds to the overall efficiency and synergy in the office and in our personal lives. This alone is a huge cost savings to us. All the equipment works the same way with the same or similar interfaces and the same communication pipeline. We don’t spend extra time trying to figure out or adapt to new software ecosystems.

The MacOS is deeply familiar to us. The hidden value of a reliable Spotlight engine, consistent menus, ease of software installation, lack of virus issues, time estimates on copying, etc. (you know, all the things that make Mac so much better) are invisible and often incalculable to our cost savings but nevertheless we know they exist and would be fools to ignore them.

Because we know our Apple products if something goes wrong we can usually figure it out ourselves in a very short amount of time and any hour of the night or day. This means we save a ton of money on tech support and we don’t lose a ton of money waiting for tech support. Our clients have an extremely low pain threshold for late or overdue delivery. So our tech issues have to be minimal and easily fixable. With Apple they usually are.

If Apple products didn’t do all that for us, we wouldn’t be using Apple.

Our systems are also the most used pieces of equipment we own. Unlike our production gear (cameras, lights, sound), our computers are operating almost all the time (rendering animation can be a 24–7 activity). That means if we amortized the cost of a new MacPro over it’s use of 3–4 years the expense of this is a few dollars a day. I can’t say the same for any other equipment purchase. Especially our car — which, while I wrote this, is currently sitting in our driveway doing nothing.

Gathering Dust:

Daniel’s articles are insightful and thorough and make a great case for Apple and its direction. But implying Apple always knows what its doing is a dangerous assumption. As I noted earlier, our MacPros are from 2012. We didn’t want to buy new computers then but we had to. The “trashcan” came out in 2013 and it was too soon for us to re-invest. And as the years went on that model was never updated to any huge degree. Investing in that obsolescence was not the wisest of choice for us.

More than six years will have passed before Apple releases a new MacPro. Six years sitting on the same electronic product is virtually unheard of in professional tech and Apple is certainly no exception. So you can’t spin this late MacPro update as anything other than a big, fat “Uh Oh” on Apple’s part. They basically dropped the ball — hard. This wasn’t strategy. This was neglect, pure and simple. I know this because as a busy (frantic?) business owner, I do it all the time. Many is the issue we don’t see until it’s a huge crisis. But then we recognize that we need to pay more attention to it in the future just like I believe Apple is doing now.

Blind Spot:

This is the scene I imagined happened at Apple sometime in 2016 or 2017. Tim Cook is sitting at the end of a table. His various executives gathered around as they pour over data about the latest iOS device sales and projections and how well things are going. Apple is doing great and all seems well. Then a member of his design and development team raise their hands and they say, rather sheepishly, that they need to make a huge purchase request for a series of Windows or Linux PC towers. When Tim, perhaps uncharacteristically, expresses shock and surprise they gulp and explain “You see, our Macs can’t handle the demands of our design team anymore”.

I think Apple needs a MacPro too.

It’s not hard to imagine that Apple in it’s focus on the iOS market neglected the very tools it uses to make them. And the optics of leaning into PC systems to get professional work done would be hard to spin in tech circles or with consumers. It wasn’t that long ago Tim was photographed with a PC on a Chinese assembly line and boy did the press make hay out of that. Even if they built their own custom devices (they probably do!) it still would not go over well that Apple’s own gear isn’t up to a task. Can God himself make a rock so big that he can’t lift it? Not if Tim has anything to say about it.

Animation and post production, with its demands, is the most punishing on computers systems, in my humble opinion. Our industry drives the professional market — but we’re certainly not alone. Designers, coders and many others need some smoking-hot gear. I believe Apple could not afford to let that crown be passed to their competition permanently.

But I also think what they learn from developping their top gear trickles down into all their other products. The iPhone and the iPad wouldn’t exist without the Mac first. Starving the Mac’s top tier also impacts the other Apple branches. By building the best chip and the best components you have fresh insight as to what you can do with other, less demanding gear. This in conjunction with what Daniel rightly points out as a billion in sales, MacPro investment and development is a win-win for Apple.

The box:

We love Apple. We own so many products that prove this. People who know us come to us with Apple issues and complaints and we try to help them every way we can. We literally get texts in the middle of the night. And we do help them because often the problems are easy to diagnose and fix with a simple setting change. A casual meal with friends will inevitably turn to conversation about our thoughts on Apple. But we have no crystal ball. We too are constantly amazed by Apple’s product line and its ability to create new markets and implement newer, better ideas. And now we will be lining up eagerly for the MacPros with our credit card at the ready. (Soon? We hope soon. These 2012s are on their last legs.)

But I can’t help but admit I’m a little disappointed. The specs are great. The price more than worth it. It’s, well, the device itself. After six years we got a new, shiny quiet box, more slots, two whole thunderbolt 3 ports (!) and a faster chip. I want them. I need them. But…meh. It’s like decades later Star Wars finally gets new movies and that was what they came up with?

I guess I was looking for the towers to take on a new life of their own. Built in iPhone-like touch screen on the front to relay and modify system information on the case. Ditching the ancient headphone port like it did with the iPhones. A new tactile keyboard but with keys that change their information depending on the software. A thumb-print ID on the side of the keyboard to unlock the system. Or maybe the monitor having built-in FaceID. How about near instant start-up and shut down so system issues and crashes aren’t as frustrating for users? A modular concept so systems can jump and leap in scale and speed just by adding on and adding on and adding on. Maybe the case changes colours! Or maybe something I haven’t thought of that fixes a huge problem we didn’t even know we had. You know, something more… Apple.

Apple isn’t a computer company. They aren’t an electronics company. I believe the real genius of Apple is something even Apple doesn’t fundamentally understand. They are an interface company. They make the best interfaces; software and hardware. They design with a mindset of creating a product that is virtually manual free, whose interactions don’t chafe the user to the point of insanity (the least inter-chafing™, as I like to call it). And when Apple sees something is chafing, they eagerly redesign it. Again and again.

The MacPro seems long overdue for a bolder refresh of its hardware interface and this 2019 model, while it is incredibly powerful, useful, and necessary could still have been so much more. (Maybe.) Say what you want about the trashcan, it was trying to reinvent the wheel to make a better wheel. You bet Phil’s ass they were innovating there. That MacPro was trying to redefine what a desktop system could be like. This 2019 MacPro does not really do that. From a design perspective, they just created a 2014 MacPro. This is a stepping stone on the way to a better desktop system. Or so we, users who need and love the MacPro, hope.

I love you Apple. And now I challenge you to reinvent! To make a MacPro so much better than other desktops in innovation and design that the competition are once again forced to go back to the photocopy machine, er… I mean drawing board.. Equipment so innovative, so cool and you’d be a fool not to own one. The “must have” of desktops or why exactly did you even bother to spend the money on a computer anyway‽

But do us a favour and release it in another three to four years when we can afford to buy a new system again.

><({(º>