Whatever Happened to the Mac Pro?

Apple's new MacBook Pro is targeted at creative professionals, but its slim, light frame made me wonder: whatever happened to the big iron?

Apple spent most of talking about the Mac, which was a refreshing change from nonstop iPhone/iPad mania. In Apple's world, Steve Jobs once said, iOS devices are like cars and Macs are like trucks. Most people want to drive a car, but you can't get the world's work done without some heavy equipment.

The heaviest of that heavy equipment is the Mac Pro. True to its name, Apple's premiere desktop takes on the big jobs no other Mac can. It's aggressively expandable and blazingly fast, designed to be used with multiple hard drives and big monitors. Mac Pros crunch major scientific data, render 3D models, operate digital signage, serve websites, and manipulate professional photographs.

Apple doesn't seem to care.

In its Mac-centric keynote this week, . The Mac Pro got an without a moment's mention in a two-hour keynote. Literally, not a word. At least the last iMac bump in May.

The company hasn't given a hint that the Mac Pro may be updated to Apple's new port standards, such as USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. It's a pretty good bet that if a machine doesn't have Thunderbolt, it's not something Apple wants to spotlight. For one thing, not having Thunderbolt is going to make it hard to move peripherals around in multi-Mac workplaces.

Desktop PCs are in decline because people can now use laptops for the things that used to require desktops. Laptops also now more affordable and much more convenient to boot. We've seen that at PCMag, where most of us (including myself) use laptops for day-to-day work. My wife, a professional artist, uses a Core i5 MacBook for her Photoshop work. It's fast enough.

Apple has been updating the iMac for a while, and the latest iMacs now outperform some Mac Pros. But many pros want the Pro for its expandability, including the ability to swap in powerful graphics cards, giant hard drives, and towering monitors.

Some applications also still need extreme power. It took a 12-core desktop to crunch our numbers for Fastest Mobile Networks. And no laptop can drive 14 displays, as Matrox shows with a Mac Pro in this case study.

Abandoning the Niche
The problem is that desktop PCs are becoming a niche market. It's a powerful, important niche, but a niche nonetheless.

But Apple's not a niche company. Apple makes a relatively small number of products targeted at the widest possible bases. Samsung makes dozens of phones for dozens of niches: Apple makes three. HP has dozens of laptop models. Apple has four base MacBook Airs and six base MacBook Pro configs.

It looks like the Mac Pro niche may be too small, relative to Apple's other product lines, to pay much attention to anymore.

So here's where things get interesting: what's the creative professional to do? Mac Pro owners have invested thousands of dollars in their Apple ecosystems, and they're usually among the platform's most passionate proponents.

And fortunately, Mac Pros are pretty expandable. They're long-term investments where you can swap in new hard drives, add new video cards, and plant new monitors on top when necessary. But what happens when Mac Pro owners want to upgrade, for instance to process 4K video?

There's an opportunity here for other PC makers to pay more attention to these professionals and take their business. Apple can't serve a thousand niches, but Dell and HP can. Can those PC makers show enough love to creative professionals to win them over? They haven't had a great track record so far, but unless Apple pays them some attention, pros may end up with no alternative.

For more, check out and the WWDC slideshow below.