The High-End Notebook Gets a 15.4-inch Retina Display, But the 17-inch Model Disappears from the Lineup
When Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage today at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference held annually in San Francisco, the audience (and those of us in cyberspace) expected many things, among them details about new versions of the venerable Mac Pro towers long a staple of production and post facilities everywhere. Cook did have lots to share, but he ended his remarks just before 3:00 pm ET without filling in the blanks about the Mac Pro's future. The company, however, has quietly and only slightly upgraded its Mac Pro offerings according to its site, where it lists new benchmarks for the upgraded towers ( a 20% increase in Final Cut Pro X performance) and new pricepoints. (For a nice summary, check out this post from The Verge.)
As expected, Apple also announced OS X Mountain Lion operating system and new notebook computers, including a MacBook Pro with a 15.4-inch retina display, seven-hour battery and a 256 GB Flash memory drive for $2199. (For full specs on additional configurations, including a 768 GB HDD model and an interactive look at the retina display model, go here.) Those notebooks, like the new MacBook Airs also announced, are impressively thin and sleek. When Phil Schiller, Apple's head of world-wide marketing, took to the stage he aligned the new MacBook Pro with his finger to give audience members some clear perspective on its narrow frame. Is this the end of the line for the beloved "cheese grater" towers? And are these new MacBook Pros their eventual successors? Unfortunately, there are still enough missing details that might definitively answer these questions. Also missing, at least during the keynote, was any mention of what will become of the 17-inch version of the MacBook Pro.
Siri, a kind of otherwordly Steve Jobs stand-in, warmed up the crowd at the start of the keynote and returned an hour later with more Siri-related news. The voice-activated search assistant can now launch apps and has added maps that will integrate better with reservation apps like OpenTable. She will also be coming to the latest iPad that shipped in March. Other related announcements included new dictation abilities that will be coming to the Mac and "third-party applications like Microsoft Word."
The big iOS news of the day for iPhone and iPad users included iOS 6 details about improved maps and full Facebook integration. Another interesting tidbit: of the 650,000+ apps in the App Store, roughly one third were designed specifically for the iPad.
Sections: Technology
Topics: Article apple MacBook Pro retina display
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So the MacPro tower is left to die a slow death and absolutely no mention of new iMacs – wtf?! I never thought I’d see the day but my next box may be an HP:(
Like with FCP 7, it appears that the honchos at Apple have decided that they’d rather design & sell products to 50 million consumers & prosumers than to 100,000 professionals making up the worldwide production crowd.
How can they forget the professionals that promoted them and sang their praises when they didnt have the audience of the masses? Yes, the laptops are better and faster but if you can fit a faster speed and processing into an i-mac or laptop, you can surely fit 8 times the processing power into a tower. Hackintosh towers may be the future. If they don’t service our needs (professional media), then somebody else will.
It costs money to manufacture things, and if the market isn’t there…it wouldn’t end well.
It’s not even as if people “promoted them” out of some sort of altruism, either. The fact is that the market has changed, and they’re doing what makes sense.
Shogunz
A question —Do you work for Apple?
Nope, just think the automatic sense of entitlement some people demonstrate is silly. Guess society is changing.
For the most part I agree with Shogunz, though I believe Apple is making a long-term mistake in their treatment of creative professional customers. Apple is not a typical computer company like an HP or Dell, they are a designer/luxury brand. They are Ferrari, or a Coco Chanel. Their brand wasn’t founded solely on “getting the job done”, it was doing it with a certain style and class. It is supposed to evoke emotion and passion in its users. It’s what has allowed them to charge much higher prices than other computer companies over the years. Part of that style and class meant that their tech had to be in the hands of high profile drool-worthy people. Apple co-opted Hollywood and creative professionals to show that their products weren’t just soulless number-crunching IBM boxes, but a lifestyle and statement of your coolness and creativity. They took creative professionals and largely ignored business markets where the “classless” IBM-compatibles flourished. Apple needed creative pros to be cool by association, then they packaged that associated cool and sold it to us at a premium.
You might be thinking, so what? Now that Apple is the most profitable company in the history of the world, why should they bother catering to the relatively small market of creatives any more? Because Apple’s meteoric rise and reign won’t last forever, and that cool-by-association is an important commodity to retain lest they become just another manufacturer of goods like the once-mighty Nokia. Also because a loyal creative pro fan base is not only what kept them alive all the lean years, but is what kept Apple–and still does–in the public consciousness with all of the cameos in TV, movies, and advertising photos as pros used their own beloved gear as props. Those creative pros have been not just fans but evangelists in media–a customer that got Apple’s product in front of millions for free. One could argue that millions of amateurs putting their Apple products in Youtube videos is better than an iMac showing up in a TV commercial or Hollywood movie. But people want to emulate their heroes, their favorite shows, those who are accomplished, and pay a premium to do so. People walk around in high-priced Air Jordans, or wear jerseys of their favorite basketball player or team. Fad memes aside, people don’t wear John Doe’s name on their back year-after-year because they saw him score in a driveway basketball game on youtube.
Long-term, other brands are catching up with the functionality and design appeal of the Macs and iDevices while driving prices lower. Microsoft’s Surface is an example of the design competition (big question on whether it will deliver in functionality yet), and it means Apple is no longer the only drool-inducing hardware maker out there. This problem is compounded since Apple can’t compete with the variety of designs (number of choices) that are and will be coming from so many competing vendors on different OSs. If people don’t like the look of the single apple model of computer/table/laptop this year–tough, no choices but to look elsewhere. Samsung is making some solid tablets and phones, and there are more and more notebooks and iMac-like once-piece PCs every day. So Apple’s luxury brand is going to have tougher competition in design moving forward.
Beyond design, Apple is going to have to start worrying about competing on price if they want to maintain their market share, and they’re going to start making design sacrifices to meet competition. Apple is already seeing huge price pressure from the much-less-capable-but-good-enough-for-many Kindle Fire, and it’s led to rampant speculation about an Apple 8″ tablet that Steve Jobs was insistent should never be produced. Rumor has it that Apple may have to remove the camera, GPS or other features in the hardware to make an “entry level” iPad. Stripping out components or making cheaper versions will erode the Luxury brand (making them less desirable), and competing on price means less profit margin.
Other operating systems will eventually “just work” too. Meaning that Apple may lose another selling point as being the only solid performer in the market. Already Android and Windows 7 (Windows 8 yet to be seen) have made strides in security and usability to the point where people will soon be comfortable with any device OS they get. On the flip side, Apple is being more aggressively targeting by Hackers, so Apple and the other OSs may meet somewhere in the middle on security.
After living through the pre-OSX days and the various image-destroying viruses and constant crashes of the then-very-glitchy Mac OS, I can tell you that the fact that Photoshop and Media 100 back in the day were only available on Mac is what kept my old employer on the platform (against extreme pressure to go to PC from IT). Now that most programs are available on multiple platforms, Apple’s walled garden is easily toppled if you have the money to switch to a new platform. Apple isn’t the only game in town there anymore.
A luxury brand like Apple will only stay a luxury brand if it has something exclusive or hard to attain. Luxury products make us feel special. If everyone is special, no one is. You can buy that leather jacket with the Ferrari logo on it, but few of us can buy the actual Ferrari. You can sell a lot more jackets than Ferraris, but you still need the car out there. So once everyone has an iMac, how is Apple going to keep that air of exclusivity? Having a pro-level monster computer like the Mac Pro that can beat any manufacturer out there is how. Much like Ford has it’s custom tricked out pony cars to show it’s a company with some serious performance chops, so should Apple remind people that like it’s logo it’s computers have bite. I want to know there is more to the Apple walled garden than an iMac if I feel the need for speed, and to do something crazy wild.
Instead what Apple has done is not just move away from the Pro market, which they could have note smartly and respectfully, but they have so through a serious of textbook-PR-dont’s and hubris that managed to insult and damage the businesses of pro users that once championed them. The FCPX debacle is a wound still fresh out there–and for anyone that found FCP7 unavailable for sale and FCPX unable to open any of their old projects it may still be unforgivable (You were in the middle of adding a new editing bay and wanted FCPX to be compatible with your old jobs? Tough, Apple knew better how you needed to edit). X serve also hurt but at least they gave people warning. Selling a “New” Pro model Mac Pro with specs 2 year old after years of waiting was/is spit in the eye. Telling us to wait yet another year while new iDevices are cranked out by the millions and every other company out there is cranking out new models yearly–quite honestly uses up almost all of the good will I have left. Apple products are supposed to evoke passion and emotion–and they hit every button on this. And as I’m sure is in the back of the mind of all Pro users, just how hard is it for the most profitable company in the history of the world to create an upgraded full form-factor tower computer that doesn’t require all of the miniaturization and special tooling/batteries/antennas/touch screens of the iDevices? It’s something the Hackintosh community has been doing all on it’s lonesome. It’s something a few Apple engineers have probably already done in their basement–and they did it with an off-the-shelf video card newer than 2010. I think people would have even have been fine with truly new guts in that 10-year old case. And what probably hurts the most is that there are no Apple options to move to when your machine is loaded with expansion cards. Your only choice is to scrap all of your hardware and go PC–or try Hackintosh. Either is painful, especially when you’re begging Apple to SELL you something that will work.
Eventually the iBuzz will fade, customers will have more options, and Apple’s market share will decline. What will keep Apple from being another once-on-the-top-of-the-world Nokia or RIM? Well, other than the barrels full of cash they have that can buy a mid-size nation, they’ll need dyed-in-the-wool-evangelists with the power to show what Apple hardware can do. They’ll need superstar cool. They’ll need alpha users than people want to emulate. They’ll need product placement in media (maybe we’ll start seeing glowing robots instead of that big white apple?). They’ll need the pro users/customers again that people want to emulate. The musicians, the filmmakers, the graphic artists, the actors, the producers, the writers, the 3D animators, the product designers, the scientists. Customers are easier to retain than recapture. I think Apple should show them a little love, especially given the history, and maybe Apple can keep the cool kid luxury moniker when the icraze is over. Apple doesn’t sell their Pro products at a loss–It’s just less profitable than their blockbuster other devices–but the return they’ll get on their investment is going to be worth it.
To Apple: like a jilted lovers what this comes down to is a simple question. Do you want us? If not, don’t string us along, let us know plainly and simply so we can move on and you can direct your energies fully to where you want to be. Otherwise, treat us with the respect we deserve.
Sorry for the ridiculously long post and mixed metaphors.
This really is sad that apple has given such a huge F-U to the professional that saved them through the 90s. Windows here i come. Shame on you apple, shame on you!
Presumably “the professional that saved them” would likely just kill them now, so they’re following the markets that make sense.
the HP 820 is incredible
Just ask anyone that purchased an HP device lately, (other than the most expensive workstations), and you will see the lack of support for their consumer products (especially network cards). I will never consider HP for anything again, (and I am in IT person at a major university).
THE NON SUPPORT OF FINAL CUT 7 IS STILL ONE OF THE MOST SENSELESS MISTAKES MADE BY APPLE .The population of editors both professional and amateur is far beyond what apple executives understand .So the message about sudden abatement of support will shadow this corporation FOR YEARS TO COME.
Yup…Apple is and will be a victim of its own success…much the way Sony lost its way thinking when it thought that the Walkman was the be all and end all of its sway over the market. Frankly, we’re now saturated with consumer trinkets, including laptops, from Apple. I’ll look forward to someone else “thinking differently about serving a core market”. Though Steve Jobs started the current track that Apple is on…history will not treat Tim Cook kindly…
Your post seems a bit silly.
I believe that within the next year we will see a brand new Mac Pro Workstation that will once again revolutionize the the “Pro” paradigm. The fact that they made a small quiet bump shows that they are not abandoning the Pro market. Look at what they have done with the Macbook Pro and just imagine what a MONSTER the next-gen Mac Pro WILL be once all the pieces are in place.