The curious case of the new Mac Pro

On Tuesday in a very unusual move Apple revealed that the company is working on a new lineup of professional Mac hardware, which includes Mac Pro, pro-level iMac, and even the Apple branded display. Mac mini seems to be alive as well. The closed media briefing was covered greatly by John Gruber, and Techcrunch on Thursday posted a full transcript. A number of interesting analytical takes were published since then, most notably by Ben Thompson and Neil Cybart (both behind the paywall) — I encourage you to read them.

This move by Apple is so strange, weird and unusual that I can’t remember any precedents of it in recent time. The most interesting thing about it is what Apple actually didn’t say. And since it didn’t say much, all what’s left for us are assumptions and guesses.

I can’t shake off the feeling that Tuesday’s reveal was a desperate move that followed a completely emergent change of direction and strategy with the Mac that happened just a few months, if not weeks, ago.

Sunsetting the Mac

I have a theory that until very recent time, Apple was sunsetting the Mac and planned to get away from the product matrix originally unveiled by Steve Jobs.

Just a few months ago Apple’s Mac strategy was completely different from what it was articulated last Tuesday. Mac was the product line that suffered from lack of resources and attention from the management, industrial design, hardware and software divisions at Apple. iOS products, not macOS, were considered within Apple as the future of computing, while Mac and traditional desktop/laptop form factors were increasingly perceived (and even marketed) by Apple as legacy products.

“Can’t innovate anymore my ass” Mac Pro was unveiled in 2013, and it was the beginning of the end for the Mac in its past form within Apple. As time went by, it seemed more and more clear that Tim Cook’s management didn’t see the need to invest into niches dependant on Mac (super high-end pro users) and rather move Mac into more mainstream and consumer-focused direction. Changes were introduced to macOS that prioritised energy saving and portability over extreme speed and performance (which is unsurprising given that Mac portables account for 80 percent of Mac sales according to Apple). Pro software became an afterthought: Aperture was discontinued at all, whereas Final Cut Pro X disappointed many core users. All hardware development focused on making Mac smaller, thinner, lighter and prettier, similar to the other product lines such as iPhone and iPad. The 2013 Mac Pro was an engineering marvel, but it prioritised small size and quietness over modularity and expandability.

The trend of making technology more accessible and casual continued with the recent MacBook Pro models — not only did Apple prefer smaller footprint device and less ports over bigger amount of RAM and an SD-slot, it actually introduced the Touch Bar feature which seemed targeted at very casual users rather than pros — it’s useful for people not fluent with super-quick typing and keyboard shortcuts, rather than coders who use their functional keys and Escape button all the time.

In the meantime, Mac Pro was perceived dead by most of the high-end users by that time, and Apple quietly told the market that it was no longer going to make standalone displays. Oh, and there were rumors of no more AirPort stations as well.

It seems that at the end of 2016, the picture and direction was very clear for Apple:

• The pro segment was extremely niche and while it was great to keep “real” pro users and tech influencers happy, the market was just too small. Apple needed to focus elsewhere — on iPad, iPhone and other devices that represented the future, not the legacy of personal computing.
• That said, Mac is still important and will remain important for the world for the foreseeable future. So in order to keep Mac relevant in the post-PC world, Apple needed to keep innovating and making it more accessible and casual and more in line with its iOS product development — hence dropping the “true” edge-case Pro users and hardware for them and focusing on more consumer-friendly macOS products.

My theory is that in order to do that, Apple seemed confident it needed to cut the lineup of macOS products:

• 12-inch MacBook was designed to be very casual, thin and light to support the needs of managers, office workers and majority of casual macOS users not doing any processing-heavy work, but still requiring a desktop OS. It was clearly a mid-term replacement for the MacBook Air that would eventually get discontinued.
• MacBook Pro with Touch Bar was designed for more power-hungry users in need of more CPU and GPU power and RAM. Apple felt like these configurations of MacBooks would cover the needs of the majority of current “pro” Mac users. For those who would feel disappointed, Apple would recommend moving to desktop iMac. TouchBar as the feature was the first move towards making Mac keyboards touch-exclusive (this concept very closely resembles what I believe is Apple’s endgame for the Touch Bar) and even more accessible to more casual audience. It was a classic Apple move of empowering regular people rather than catering to the extreme needs of power users.
• iMac was positioned as the only desktop product Apple felt worth investing into going forward. Few people buy desktops these days, but those who do need super powerful computers and by definition couldn’t care less about portability, lightness and size. Apple thought that for the most of its “pro” customers, the new iMac Pro configuration (probably developed alongside lighter “regular” iMac model) would be enough to do the job.
• Mac Pro was killed. Apple thought that almost everyone who used to buy Mac Pro in the past would be well served by either high-end MacBook Pro or the iMac Pro. Apple saw no need for the super-niche, super high-end desktop machine anymore.
• Mac mini was killed as well. While it served a good purpose of being an entry-level Mac for switchers from Windows PCs back in the day, Apple didn’t see the need to devote resources to this niche product — again, Apple was not interested in growing the macOS platform in a long term and instead preferred milking the existing Mac users by keeping raising ASPs as long as people wanted to spend that much on macOS devices (a classic strategy: when you are no longer interested in growing — or just can’t grow — the product, start increasing ARPPU). Inexpensive Mac mini didn’t fit into this strategy at all.
• Since iMac (an all-in-one with integrated display) was planned to remain the only Apple desktop computer going forward, Apple didn’t see the need to keep working on standalone Apple branded displays. Hence killed them.
• AirPort accessories were also killed as the result of shifting focus and resources from Mac elsewhere. In the world of mobile and wearable devices, local WiFi is not that exciting.
• macOS pro software was deprioritised as well. While Aperture was officially killed, Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X remained quite stall for a long time, and development of iWork became very slow. OS level macOS development slowed down as well and took a back seat to iOS and watchOS.

That’s how the product matrix looked like before last Tuesday:

Apple’s previous Mac product matrix

This strategy seemed clear and logical, albeit of course disappointing to a very small portion of high-end pro users left in the cold. Apple seemed more than confident that it would serve the majority of its Mac users with the simplified hardware lineup and was happy to cede the pro software space to Microsoft and Adobe in the meantime. It also hoped people would start migrating to iPad Pro, and launched a significant marketing campaign to state that iPad Pro was “better” than a PC.

And then something happened. What exactly happened is the most interesting thing in this whole story. But it’s clear that over the course of a relatively short time, Apple suddenly realised that the strategy was very wrong.

Something happened

I have a feeling that Apple’s change of mind happened in two stages.

The first took place throughout the year 2016, closer to its end. Even though the MacBook Pro event in October was disappointing to many core Mac users who waited desperately for new Mac desktops, it was convincing that Apple was again determined to invest more resources into the Mac.

• The company pushed the envelope tremendously with the Touch Bar. If Apple didn’t want to invest into long-term future of the Mac, it wouldn’t bother with introducing such an innovative and incredibly complex feature requiring tight integration of hardware and software and lots of R&D resources. Apple, however, did invest and conveyed this message very clearly.
• Apple seemed to rediscover its software mojo. Final Cut Pro X and, to a lesser extent, Logic Pro X suddenly went out of limbo and received a lot of attention and healthy updates. iWork suite of apps recently got a very serious update on both macOS and iOS. Fast forward to last Tuesday, and Apple yet again commits to its support of pro software.
• In one of the internal company e-mails in December 2016, Tim Cook confirmed Apple’s commitment to the Mac. Note how he specifically referred to iMac when addressing the Mac desktop issue. I suspect that by that time (end of 2016) Apple was still moving forward with the Mac product matrix strategy I outlined above, and Mac Pro and Mac mini were dead at the time, while iMac Pro was long in the works.

But then something made Apple change its mind with regards to the Mac in such a dramatic way, that it completely changed its strategy and basically performed a 180-turn. The new strategy was announced by Apple last Tuesday:

• Pro segment once again started to matter much for Apple’s management. Note how Tim Cook told investors at the end of February 2017 that Apple is very interested in professionals, particularly creative pros.
• Apple suddenly realised that iMac as the only one-fits-all desktop solution would not work. Following that revelation, Apple kept working on iMac Pro that has been long in the development, but in parallel started working on Mac Pro and (maybe) even Mac mini.
• Following recent problems with LG 5K UltraFine Display and resurrection of the screenless Macs, Apple decided to resume working on standalone displays.
• Apple doubled down on first-party Pro software and confirmed its commitment to it.

Given that the new pro hardware products will not be ready this year, I suspect that the U-turn happened in early 2017. I don’t believe Apple wouldn’t be able to deliver the new Mac Pro this year had it started working on it long time ago.

It is indeed a fundamental strategy shift that seems to have happened almost overnight. So what could make Apple wake up in the dark, cold-sweated, realising that something needs to change, and change quickly?

What happened?

I have a few guesses:

• Following the lack of meaningful Mac hardware updates in recent years, and particularly after the release of the controversial MacBook Pro in 2016, Apple started hearing complaints from many partners and contacts in enterprise and creative industries.
• Note how Apple works closely with IBM and Cisco, among others, these days. It’s highly possible that IBM might have started facing challenges with selling Mac hardware to third-party partners disappointed with lack of hardware progress, and these complaints were escalated to Apple’s management.
• The alarm might have been set off when countless design and production studios throughout the world — the ones that Apple used to work with closely — started migrating to Windows PCs at the end of 2016. Note how the “switching to PC” narrative among “pro” users reached its peak by the end of last year.
• Apple started hearing a lot of complaints from influential “pro” users directly that finally convinced them that not only Apple needs to change the Mac strategy really quickly, it needs to communicate it way before people would start jumping ship in droves — hence Tuesday’s event.
• Apple might have felt that outrage damaged the Apple brand and gave them very bad publicity among creative professionals and influencers (for example, note how ATP podcast hosts complained about the state of the Mac in every single episode in recent months). While this doesn’t affect the bottom line in any way in the short term, maybe Apple started to see some worrying business and brand positioning trends.
• Microsoft significantly increased its investment into both Windows hardware and software. Windows 10 has been going from strength to strength, with the new Creators Update explicitly targeting core Mac users, whereas the lineup of Surface products started to gain traction. Apple might have received data indicating that people have indeed started to switch from Mac to Windows in significant numbers.
• The MacBook Pro possibly didn’t meet Apple’s expectations in terms of high-end/pro users penetration and reception. While the machine seems to be selling very well, it might be doing so thanks to more casual users, whereas the “pro” community was quite vocally negative about both the “gimmicky” Touch Bar, lack of ports and RAM. Apple might have underestimated the behavioural debt particularly common with the core community, and overestimated their willingness to accept Apple’s new direction.
• As a result, Apple suddenly realised that none of the Mac hardware products it had on the market or was working on (MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac Pro) did satisfy small but influential segment of vocal Mac “pro” users, and it needed to resurrect the Mac Pro and probably change its future strategy with MacBook Pro as well.

I’m quite confident that most, if not all of these guesses are close to truth. I still feel, however, that there was one single thing that triggered the change of strategy dramatically and resulted in Apple doing an unprecedented act of damage control by inviting 5 journalists to the campus, basically apologising to “pro” community and announcing products that have been just recently incepted. I’m dying to know what was the trigger.

The key takeaway is that Apple suddenly felt that “pro” users were important and influential enough so that Apple would need to invest into supporting them even though in terms of pure P&L it wouldn’t probably even register on the radar. It was a pure marketing and communications, not financial move. Note how Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of marketing, hosted the Tuesday’s meeting. It seems that he was the clear driver behind the change of the Mac strategy.

Apple is confused

I applaud Apple for being brave enough to own the mistakes it made and being very clear and open about it. I think that the Tuesday move was right. Keeping silence would have surely resulted in even increasing amount of backlash and switching from Mac.

However, the curious case of the new Mac Pro strategy leaves me wondering — does Apple really know what it is doing now? Do they really know their customers, do they have enough data, and enough vision, and insight?

The Mac Pro story is not a single example of Apple getting confused lately. A few years ago, Apple was caught flat-footed when the world moved on to big-screen smartphones while Apple was confident that iPhone 5 form factor was the gold standard. Apple introduced 7,9-inch iPad mini that seems to have tanked rather soon. Apple has undergone a tremendous rethought of the entire Apple Watch UI, software and functionality just a year after the product was released to the market. Apple has released the 4th generation Apple TV with tvOS that has not exactly set the world on fire. Apple had to fundamentally redesign Apple Music after the year on the market. Apple has launched iMessage App Store that seems to not being loved much by most developers. The rumored Apple Car project seems to be on hiatus.

Some of the recent controversial decisions were driven by the industrial design group: the gold Apple Watch Edition, pushed so hardly by Jony Ive, was quietly killed almost immediately after the Watch went on sale following lackluster response, the beautiful but compromised MacBook Pro 2016 wasn’t met with acclaim by some “pro” users, and as Neil Cybart observes, it’s hard to imagine that the recent Mac Pro reset was driven by industrial design leadership.

It almost feels that ID starts to lose power and influence at Apple following recent slips and mistakes, while engineering is getting more power. The Mac Pro case is the greatest example of this change: as exciting as it might sound to the old-school “pro” community, the new Mac strategy is the triumph of the legacy products and old ways of product development winning over the bold new direction.

Apple seems disoriented and deeply confused. And above all else, it seems to be losing confidence in its own vision.