Requiem for the Mac Pro

Moments before unveiling the new, snazzy, Touch Bar-equipped MacBook Pros at a company event last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said a sentence that likely instilled hope in the heart of many an Apple fan. 

"The Mac is so incredibly important to us," he said. 

He didn't say "MacBook Pro," — a machine that got thoroughly updated that day — he said "Mac," which means all the Mac product lines — the iMac, the Mac Mini, the MacBook, the Mac Pro. 

Remember the Mac Pro? The odd-shaped powerhouse that's essentially the pinnacle of Apple's computer lineup, the desktop machine for professionals who truly need the best hardware and the latest specs? If you don't, I can't blame you. The new Mac Pro was announced in June 2013; it hit the stores in December that same year and was never updated since. 

SEE ALSO: The MacBook dilemma: Pay more, or get an old machine

That's right; the Mac Pro, which Apple still sells on its website, starts at $2,999 and comes with the Ivy Bridge, 3.7GHz, quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor. 

The processor that Intel currently sells in that range is also called the Xeon E5, but it's the v4 variant; two generations removed from the v2 Xeon E5 used in the Mac Pro. 

Now, the professionals interested in this type of machine — video producers, music creators, etc. — don't expect Apple to have a shiny new case for this thing every year. But they do expect the latest processors, and for reasons that are completely out of grasp of human reasoning, Apple hasn't updated anything in the Mac Pro in three years. 

This means that absolutely nobody in their right mind will buy a Mac Pro now. I don't have sales figures for the Mac Pro, but if they're anything more than zero units in the last year or so, I'd be surprised. It would simply be insane to buy this machine; a pro would probably have a better time building some sort of hackintosh (that is, a custom-built PC with Apple's macOS slapped on it, which is not officially supported by Apple). This video, from March 2016 (and we've seen many similar videos since 2013), illustrates the issue nicely. 

Image: Apple

Think about that for a second. One of the largest PC makers in the world, and by far the largest company in the world by market cap, is selling a product — an entire product line, actually — that's nearly useless.

It could be argued that Apple is leaning away from the prosumer market, and there's truth to that. Even the new, top-of-the-line MacBook Pros don't have the latest Intel processors, and they don't come with more than 16GB of RAM memory. But why not call it, then? Retire the Mac Pro line, sell the current supplies and be done with it. Leaving the Mac Pro on life supply for so long just feels like negligence. 

If this were any other hardware company, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But Apple is more than a hardware company; it's also a software company, and its hardware and software go hand in hand. You can't buy a macOS Sierra-running PC from another manufacturer (unless you hack it in, as mentioned above). If you like Apple's software (and the huge third-party software ecosystem that comes with it) and are a professional that needs very powerful hardware, sorry, you're out of luck. 

This is why Cook's words at the beginning of that keynote, in retrospect, hurt so much. A lot of people care about the Mac; it's an incredibly important machine for a great deal of users. But when Apple says it cares, and then doesn't update the Mac Pro for an eternity, it just rings hollow. 

There are feeble rumors that the Mac Pro is going to get its long-deserved update come end of November. I say "feeble" because it appears to be the same old rumor that said "October or November" of 2016, but Apple's October event has come and gone, and the Mac wasn't even mentioned. 

It's possible — though unlikely — that Apple will have a separate Mac event in November; after all, the iMac and the Mac Mini could use an update as well. It's also possible that Apple would silently update some of the Mac machines in its lineup, without the fanfare that comes with an Apple event. It's definitely high time for the company to do so. While I doubt many users have been buying the Pro lately, some of them are still expecting — hoping, at least one — for a new one. If it doesn't happen, maybe the merciful thing to do for Apple is to just admit that the Mac Pro is dead.