Last week’s three-month minimum delay to their Xeon-class Sandy Bridge processors may be the final nail in the Mac Pro coffin, inside sources are now reporting.
It’s obvious Apple’s heart isn’t exactly in the Mac Pro these days. There hasn’t been an update to the line since 2010, which is significantly longer than most Apple product upgrade cycles.
According to Apple Insider, though, Apple’s pretty close to killing the line off once and for all.
Apparently, the consensus amongst Apple sales executives is that the Mac Pro is a dying product, with sales of the Pro having dropped so significantly that it is no longer even profitable for Apple to make them.
In addition, Thunderbolt obviates a lot of the need for an expandable Mac to begin with, because Thunderbolt provides the same signals as PCI Express slots, just through a cable. Why bother with a Mac Pro when your laptop’s Thunderbolt can handle the same thing?
Seems like a no-brainer to me: the Mac Pro is toast. There are no sales to support the product, and the niche the Mac Pro fills is now something regular Macs can handle. And if what is needed is simply raw CPU speed, AppleInsider speculates that future iMacs will be sold with new high-end options to appease upgrading Mac Pro owners.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
