Is the Mac doomed? Maybe so.
Case in point: although the Mac’s market share is rising worldwide -- thanks in no small part to the halo effect of iOS devices -- desktop Macs contributed only $6.4 billion to Apple’s 2011 net sales of $108.2 billion. (Apple’s fiscal year wraps up at the end of September.) Savvy readers will have noticed that the $6.4 billion I cited was for desktop Macs only. MacBooks brought in over $15 billion, with sales up 36 percent over the previous year. While that may sound impressive, the new kid on the block, the iPad, bested all shapes and sizes of MacBooks taken together, earning $20 billion during the year. That’s impressive.
To be sure, six billion simoleons ain’t chump change, but Apple won’t say how much was earned by which Mac. My guess is that the vast majority was raked in by the iMac, with the Mac Pro well behind, and that odd li’l feller, the Mac mini, earning just enough to pay the rent on its comfy, tiny, niche. The iMac is a nice machine, but it’s not cutting-edge. Let’s talk microprocessors, for example. As I write this in an L-tryptophan haze on the day after Thanksgiving, both iMacs ship with a workaday quad-core Intel Core i5 as standard equipment. The top CPU option for the 27-inch iMac is a 3.4GHz Core i7 -- not the fastest Core i7 in its wattage range, and two cores short of Intel’s power-hungry, powerful i7 Extreme. But the iMac has plenty of power for most users. After all, that “i” did originally stand for “internet,” and an i5 is more than sufficient to render Facebook pages, launch tweets, and view presidential candidates’ debate flubs on YouTube. It’s the Mac Pro that I’m worried about. It’s the Mac Pro that may face the aforementioned doom.
The Cupertinian rumor mill rumbled briefly this fall with reports that Apple was considering discontinuing its muscular workstation. What’s more, a well-connected source of mine tells me that Apple has been shifting resources away from professional software development to consumer-focused offerings -- an insight proven when Apple released Final Cut Pro X last June, an “upgrade” that most professional editors branded a significant downgrade.
Will the Mac Pro serve as a tombstone for professional software developers on Mac? Only time will tell.
The Mac Pro’s well-designed case has not changed since it was released in mid-2006, and it hasn’t seen a processor upgrade since July 2010. The stock single-processor model is based on a 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Xeon W3530, which, when you read this, will be pushing two years old. The top-of-the-line processor option, the six-core, dual-socket Intel Xeon X5670, is equally aged, and was surpassed in early 2011 by the slightly snappier X5675.
In late November 2010, Steve Jobs defined Apple quite succinctly when speaking to a group of analysts. “We’re a very high-volume consumer-electronics manufacturer,” he said. The Mac Pro is most definitely not a consumer-electronics product. It’s a beefy box with the expansion capabilities needed by professional content creators—the selfsame audience that kept Apple afloat during its darkest days.
Is the Mac Doomed? The iMac, not for a while. But the Mac Pro? Maybe so. Let’s see what happens when the next major upgrade of Intel’s two-socket Xeon processors appears, just about when 2012’s spring flowers begin to bloom.
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Since the late 1980s, Rik Myslewski has paid his rent by keeping an eye on Apple. He was editor-in-chief of MacAddict from 2001 until its transformation into Mac|Life in early 2007, and is now a member of the snarkily sophisticated team at London’s The Register, which is “biting the hand that feeds IT” daily at www.theregister.co.uk.
SABOND21
December 28, 2011 at 7:25pm
Recently, I started to work in TV company, and they had bought a few Mac Pro's (and are planing replace with them all Windows PC's). The Pro line be upgraded soon - don't worry. Personally, I have Mac Mini i5, and for me it is more than enough - I am using it for making FullHD movies, music with 25 tracks in 1 mix and it works faster, than I expected. I don't think about change it in near may be 7-9 years. Mac is quality product!
Completely
December 28, 2011 at 5:34am
Commercially speaking, it's every marketer's dream to position your brand to leverage it's near cult-like status. Yes, that is what Apple has achieved. This holiday season the product line held more than one of the most coveted electronic devices in the hotly contested electronics category, besting The Android and all others. That said, is there any question or any doubt that Apple would not want to set up a perpetual "halo effect" as it started with the iPod , then the iPhone and now the iPad that feeds its pricier products and operating system? Of course it will. It was a catchy headline that drew people in to read your article, but considering how long you've been an Apple cheerleader, you know better and are certainly just being tongue-in-cheek. Cute, but not realistic.
Jamie
December 27, 2011 at 11:59pm
Rick has been around forever, and in fact used to be the editor of the magazine that was the basis for this very site. You are clearly a noob to Mac-verse, and I'm glad you enjoy it, but it's called an editorial, in other words, opinions. You are welcome to agree or disagree, but check your history before anyone points out the embarrassing foot-in-mouth disease next time. ;)
iMac.27
December 27, 2011 at 7:41pm
First, Mac isn't anywhere near "doomed".
The Mac PRO might be, but even using your own numbers, 6.4 billion and 15 billion added together which is actual MAC sales is 21.4 BILLION and sales are up over last year 36%.
If that spells doom, I'm not sure what you would call a success.And I HATE the way you classify an i5 as being something "sufficient to render" Facebook and twitter.
I have the 2010 27" iMac with a 2.8Ghz i5 quad core and play games using 2560 x 1440 resolution on ultra settings and get 90+ FPS. The iMac quad cores are beastly machines that out perform regular PC's without breaking a sweat.
My machine boots from cold to ready to use in less than 30 seconds. I don't know of ANY windows machine that is ready to use in less than a minute to a minute and a half without it costing MORE than the iMac and using a SSD boot drive and an extreme intel over clocked to 4.5Ghz. If you compared the iMac to any other all in one, it handily beats them in every way.If you are going to try and write about Macs on a site that is supposed to be about/for Mac lovers/users, try shedding positive light on subjects pertaining to macs. To leave out the word PRO in the title was a click-on-me bait. This site is really just maximum PC throwing a little mac news up for clicks. I noticed that hardly anyone comments on anything this site has to say. Think its time to remove it from my bookmarks and look for a site that has mac users and mac lovers writing about macs.
